Worldwide Sawdust - Front Page

Obama as Nobelist, Obama as game-changer

Bob Higgins — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 11:31:59 GMT

By Juan Cole
Informed Comment

I was listening to National Public Radio on the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to President Barack Obama, and they brought on some nonentity from one of Rupert Murdoch's faux "magazines," who delivered himself of the remark that when he heard the news, he broke out laughing. He laughed at Obama. He is being paid by the Aussie media monopolist, the billionaire bully, to laugh at Obama.

The Right in the US objected to Obama getting the peace prize on the alleged grounds that he had not yet done anything to deserve it. But the Right in the United States is to peace as velociraptors were to vegetarianism. They don't believe in the ideal for which the award stands in the first place. And they find President Obama laughable, so they can't imagine him getting any awards. They have underestimated him badly and will probably pay a price for that. They misunderstand the Nobel Peace Prize and its history, and the Rupert Murdoch Right (he pays for a lot of this pollution of our airwaves) would not have agreed with any of the past awards.

The Same Old Monkey Bars

Bob Higgins — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 13:34:32 GMT

The chicken hawks of Fox and the GOP have beaten the drums incessantly in the last few days for a major troop increase in Afghanistan. One of their agreed upon talking points has been to attempt to make the case that if we leave, the dread al Qaeda will once again have a safe haven in which to set up training camps.

For the last eight years whenever I hear the phrase “al Qaeda training camp” I look up at the television and there is the same old video. You know the one I mean, the video of 5 or 6 turbaned guys in black pajamas swinging hand over hand along twenty feet of monkey bars.

There have been other videos displayed, some more or less menacing and others bordering on comedy. But the “monkey bar video” has gotten the most air time by far. I saw it again this afternoon, broadcast on one of the non Fox channels following the obligatory "al Qaeda training" sound bite from yet another pasty faced flag waving warmonger with a hatful of Lockheed or Boeing stock or contributions.

It struck me again that these clumsily swinging, PJ clad yard birds aren’t even carrying weapons. No packs, canteens, ammunition or other gear necessary for anything more threatening than a gymnastics meet.

I found myself wondering how the display of this nonsense ever instilled the kind of fear in the American populace that caused them to meekly give up their freedoms, their fundamental civil rights and fall in line behind a gang of yahoos who in a sane world, would be found in the loony bin, not in leadership positions.

We are, and have been for years, training, and equipping a potentially far more dangerous force, the Afghan army, some of whom have already turned their weapons on our troops. We spent a great deal of time and treasure in the 50’s and 60’s performing the same function in Iran and then proceeded to make military alliance with Iraq and Saddam when Iran went bad.

There is some irony in the fact that many of the same Mujahadin that we armed and nurtured in their struggle against the Soviet enemy in the 80’s are now training Afghan and Arab recruits to throw us out of the same country.

Every stage of this, no matter who is shooting at whom, in no matter what country, the same interests in the defense industry, in the oil industry, in finance, banking and their investors reap enormous profit.

No profit attends at all to the troops we sacrifice or to their enemy counterparts in these insane resource wars. Their lot is pain and death and the eternal keening of their grief stricken families.

We, as a nation gained nothing in Vietnam, only public debt and private death. Our gains in Iraq and Afghanistan will be the same, public debt, private death and vast treasure for the profiteers.

Tomorrow I’m going out in the yard with a hack saw. I’m going to cut down my monkey bars. I seldom use them any more and I’ll sleep better knowing that the “terrorists” will be unable to get to me.

How Would the Right Know It's Wrong?

Bob Higgins — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 22:55:23 GMT

While the left despairs of Barack Obama's capitulation to K Street and Wall Street, the right continues to insist that he's a Marxist, socialist, communist enemy of capitalism. What could possibly convince the right that it's wrong - about that, or anything else?

Not the press. The right gets its facts from Fox News, talk radio, the screaming sirens on the Web and the mandarins of the Wall Street Journal editorial page. It maintains that the mainstream media is in the tank for liberals, which is hilarious, because the prestige press is so terrified of the right that it has substituted the diligence of he-said/she-said stenography for the challenge of refereeing disputes, and because the 24/7 chase for ratings and page-hits makes covering sex, celebrity and crime - and celebrity sex crime - way more important than figuring out what's actually important.

Not the political system. Demagoguery is fun. It wins airtime. Its plumage-ruffling signifies to the Beltway culture a mature appreciation for the virtues of pandering and partisanship. It's also profitable: polarizing plus demonizing equals fundraising. Whatever hopes the Founders had for the deliberative grandeur of our legislative system are mocked by the likes of Michelle Bachman, John Boehner, Mitch McConnell and James Inhofe.

Bill Maher And Jay Leno Read Sexual Emails From Politicians

Bob Higgins — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 14:34:32 GMT

Bill Maher was Jay Leno's guest last night on his fledgling show, and while Leno is now in primetime, Maher brought a certain late night attitude to the program by suggesting the pair read the highly sexualized emails of Republican Governor Mark Sanford and Republican Representative Mark Foley. While Leno read the sugary love letters Sanford sent to his Argentinian mistress, Maher read the IMs Foley sent to his underage pages. Guess which were more disturbing.

More at The Huffington Post

Clean coal is fictional

Bob Higgins — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 14:58:05 GMT

Jessy Tolkan: Washington saying coal industry can be "clean" is pure fiction

Paul Jay speaks to Jessy Tolkan at the Tides Foundations' Momentum conference in San Francisco. They speak about Tolkan's coalition on climate change fighting Obama to establish a moratorium on all coal mining. Tolkan says that Washington's push for "clean coal" is not enough because the coal industry's and President Obama's argument that the production of coal can be clean is "an absolute, 100% lie." She also says that "the science is clear that if we don't address coal head on, it's almost "game over" for the planet."

Bio
Jessy Tolkan is the Executive Director for the Energy Action Coalition, a group of 50 leading youth organizations throughout the U.S. and Canada that organize on college campuses, high schools, and in local communities. Energy Action Coalition is growing a generation-wide movement to stop global warming, by advocating for green jobs, stopping new coal plants, and making young people's voices heard in the policy debate around global climate change. As state director for the New Voters Project, Tolkan helped register more than 130,000 young voters producing one of the highest youth turnout rates in the country. Tolkan helped plan Power Shift 2007 and 2009, conferences that brought together more than 12,000 youth representing all 50 states, and resulted in the largest single lobby day on Capitol Hill focused on global warming. She also spearheaded Power Vote, a campaign to mobilize 1,000,000 young voters on climate and energy issues. She's been featured in Time, Vanity Fair, and on Hard Ball with Chris Matthews. In 2006 she was named one of the Real Hot 100 Women in America.

Bernie Sanders Unfiltered

Bob Higgins — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 19:43:54 GMT

Who Owns Congress?
Over a year ago, we suffered the most significant financial collapse since the Great Depression, and the result of that is massive unemployment and underemployment. People lost their savings. People lost their homes. Now, despite the greed and illegal behavior of Wall Street, there is a massive effort to make sure that Congress does nothing about it. You know what? That might end up being the result.
How does it happen that Wall Street was able to convince Congress to deregulate their industry, to be in a position to bring the economy down? How does it happen that they are able to fend off serious efforts in Congress to try to re-regulate the financial institutions to protect the American people? Here's the answer: In the last 10 years, Wall Street and big financial institutions have spent over $5 billion in campaign contributions and in lobbying activities. It doesn't matter whether you are a Democrat or a Republican; if you have any influence they are going to go after you.

Over a year ago, we suffered the most significant financial collapse since the Great Depression, and the result of that is massive unemployment and underemployment. People lost their savings. People lost their homes. Now, despite the greed and illegal behavior of Wall Street, there is a massive effort to make sure that Congress does nothing about it. You know what? That might end up being the result.
How does it happen that Wall Street was able to convince Congress to deregulate their industry, to be in a position to bring the economy down? How does it happen that they are able to fend off serious efforts in Congress to try to re-regulate the financial institutions to protect the American people? Here's the answer: In the last 10 years, Wall Street and big financial institutions have spent over $5 billion in campaign contributions and in lobbying activities. It doesn't matter whether you are a Democrat or a Republican; if you have any influence they are going to go after you.

More at Who Owns Congress?

The siege of Tegucigalpa

Bob Higgins — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 17:09:57 GMT

Repression ordered to the neighborhoods of the Honduran capital, forcing the poor to fight or starve
As the anti-coup resistance approaches 90 consecutive days of civil disobedience, it counts itself a new international ally. The government of Brazil has replaced the United States as international organizer in bringing down the coup government of Roberto Micheletti. The Real News gets an update on the situation in the capital from independent journalist Sandra Cuffe, and a fresh analysis from Al Giordano.

Produced by: Jesse Freeston
Bio

Al Giordano is an investigative journalist based in Chiapas, Mexico. He has spent most of the summer of 2009 reporting from post-coup Honduras. He is originally from the Bronx, New York. Since 2000 he has been the publisher of Narco News, which reports mainly on the US War on Drugs effects on the people of Mexico and Central America. He is also the founder of the School for Authentic Journalism and writes a blog called The Field which focuses on US politics.

Sandra Cuffe is an independent journalist and photographer from Montr?al, Canada. She contributes regularly to The Dominion magazine in Canada, and Latin American political newsletter, Upside Down World. You can find her photos from Honduras at: http://flickr.com/photos/lavag...

More at The Real News

Working Class Zero

Bob Higgins — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 13:39:58 GMT

Photo by Matt Nager Mark Williams speaking during a Tea Party Express rally at the Cape Buffalo Grille in Dallas, Texas, on Sept, 4, before heading to Washington, D.C.

By Timothy Egan
The New York Times

The first nine years of the new century have yet to find a defining label, something as catchy as Tom Wolfe's "Me Decade" of the 1970s or the "Silent Generation" of 1950s men in gray flannel suits. Bookmarked by the horror of 9/11 and the history of a black president, the aughts certainly don't lack for drama.

But last week, lost in the commotion over the brat's cry of Joe Wilson and the shotgun blast of rage in the Washington protest, something definitive was released just as this decade nears its curtain call.

For average Americans, the last 10 years were a lost decade. At the end of President George W. Bush's eight years in office, American households had less money and less economic security, and fewer of them were covered by health care than 10 years earlier, the Census Bureau reported in its annual survey.

The poverty rate in 2008 rose to 13.2 percent, the highest in 11 years, while median household income fell to $50,303. Ten years earlier, adjusted for inflation, it was $51,295.

Of course this reflects the ravages of a horrid recession. But the decline started before the collapse in the housing and financial sectors - and it was calculated, in the eyes of some.

Harvard economist Lawrence Katz called it "a plutocratic boom." If anything comes close to defining the era, that would be my nomination. President Bush cut $1.3 trillion in taxes - and the biggest beneficiaries by far were the top 1 percent of earners. At the same time, Wall Street was inflated by the helium of a regulation-free economy that eventually gave us Bernie Madoff and banks begging for bailouts.

Now consider the people who showed up in a state of generalized rage in Washington over the weekend. They have no leaders, save a self-described rodeo clown - Glenn Beck of Fox News - and some well-funded Astroturf outfits from the permanent lobbying class inside the Beltway. They are loosely organized under a Tea Party movement, but these people are closer to British Tories than 18th century patriots with a love of equality.

And they have the wrong target.

Parrots of the Right

Bob Higgins — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 13:12:19 GMT

Cartoon by Kevin Siers Charlotte Observer

"A Day in the Life of Joe Middle-Class Republican"

Bob Higgins — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 13:09:40 GMT

One of my favorites from Thom Hartman. His recital of John Gray's Day in the Life of Joe Middle-Class Republican:

"A Day in the Life of Joe Middle-Class Republican"

Joe gets up at 6:00am to prepare his morning coffee. He fills his pot full of good clean drinking water because some liberal fought for minimum water quality standards. He takes his daily medication with his first swallow of coffee. His medications are safe to take because some liberal fought to insure their safety and work as advertised.

All but $10.00 of his medications are paid for by his employers medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance, now Joe gets it too. He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs this day. Joe's bacon is safe to eat because some liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry.
Joe takes his morning shower reaching for his shampoo; His bottle is properly labeled with every ingredient and the amount of its contents because some liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained.

Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some tree hugging liberal fought for laws to stop industries from polluting our air. He walks to the subway station for his government subsidized ride to work; it saves him considerable money in parking and transportation fees. You see, some liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.

Joe begins his work day; he has a good job with excellent pay, medical benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some liberal union members fought and died for these working standards. Joe's employer pays these standards because Joe's employer doesn't want his employees to call the union. If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed he'll get a worker compensation or unemployment check because some liberal didn't think he should loose his home because of his temporary misfortune.

Its noon time, Joe needs to make a Bank Deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe's deposit is federally insured by the FDIC because some liberal wanted to protect Joe's money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the depression.

Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae underwritten Mortgage and his below market federal student loan because some stupid liberal decided that Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his life-time.

Joe is home from work, he plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive to dads; his car is among the safest in the world because some liberal fought for car safety standards. He arrives at his boyhood home. He was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers Home Administration because bankers didn't want to make rural loans. The house didn't have electric until some big government liberal stuck his nose where it didn't belong and demanded rural electrification. (Those rural Republican's would still be sitting in the dark)
He is happy to see his dad who is now retired. His dad lives on Social Security and his union pension because some liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn't have to. After his visit with dad he gets back in his car for the ride home

He turns on a radio talk show, the host's keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. (He doesn't tell Joe that his beloved Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day) Joe agrees, "We don't need those big government liberals ruining our lives; after all, I'm a self made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have".

The Death of Why?: An Interview With Author Andrea Batista Schlesinger

Rob Ellman — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 00:51:04 GMT

The topic below was originally posted on my blog, the Intrepid Liberal Journal.

The phrase "knowledge is power" is a cliché in our culture. Yet as often as we hear it from others or speak it ourselves, how often have we contemplated the process of acquiring knowledge? Is there a blueprint for obtaining knowledge and wisdom? Are we encouraging children to be intellectually curious or merely teaching them that every question has an instant and obvious answer?

In her book, The Death of Why?: The Decline of Questioning and the Future of Democracy (Berrett-Kohler Publishers), New York City policy expert Andrea Batista Schlesinger writes that,

"Why is the first question most children ask. With this question we express, to the delight and chagrin of our parents, our power.

In my life, questions have always been power. Asking them enabled me to overcome the challenges I faced as a young woman sitting at tables where I didn't automatically belong."

Although only thirty-two, Schlesinger has operated in the arena of policy debates locally in New York City and nationally for over a decade. Since 2002, Schlesinger has applied her background in public policy, politics, and communications to transform the Drum Major Institute ("DMI") into a progressive policy think tank with national impact. During her tenure as Executive Director, DMI created its Marketplace of Ideas series which highlights successful progressive policies from across the country and launched two public policy blogs that reach several thousand readers a day; and embarked on a national program to nurture careers in public policy for college students from underrepresented communities.

Recently, Schlesinger took a leave of absence from DMI to serve as a senior policy adviser to the re-election campaign of New York City mayor Michael R. Bloomberg - a decision that is controversial among New York City liberals like myself. Prior to joining DMI, Schlesinger directed a national Pew Charitable Trusts campaign to engage college students in discussion about the future of Social Security and served as the education adviser to Bronx borough president and mayoral candidate Fernando Ferrer.

The one life lesson Schlesinger has learned above all others in her career and promotes passionately her book is that questions equals power. It is Schlesinger's contention that our culture promotes instant answers at the expense of inquiring.

With this book, Schlesinger has four primary objectives:

Convince readers of the importance of inquiry in our democracy
Illustrate how the very institutions that should be encouraging inquiry such as schools, the media, and government, the Internet are instead undermining intellectual curiosity in our society;
Inspire readers with hopeful examples of people working to restore inquiry to its rightful place of importance;
Convey a sense of urgency among citizens to develop effective "habits of the mind" and not be easily seduced by instant easy sound bite answers to complex challenges such as global warming.

Death of Why, is a well researched and scrupulously sourced eleven chapters and 215 pages of text. Where Schlesinger's book is especially provocative is when she takes bloggers like me to task for engaging in robotic group-think and avoiding engagement with people possessing different viewpoints.

Former New York Governor Mario Cuomo said that,

"The road to wisdom is asking 'why'? Andrea Batista Schlesinger has been asking 'why?" and supplying her own bright and thoughtful answers for long enough so that some of us suggested she write a book. It's foruntate for all of us that her answer was 'why not!'"

The publisher of The Nation, Kathleen vanden Heuvel added that,

"From her start in politics as a teenager Andrea Batista Schlesinger has asked the important questions. Now she asks her most important: are we teaching young people to value inquiry, and if not, what hope can we have for the future of democracy?"

Schlesinger graciously agreed to a telephone podcast interview with me this afternoon about her book. She was engaging and assertive in a conversation that was just over forty-six minutes. Among the topics discussed and debated is her contention that we're ideologically segregated, her argument that the Internet has reinforced a destructive group think mentality in our society, her advocacy for civics education and objection to teaching "financial literacy" in public schools and we closed by discussing her decision to join Mayor Bloomberg's re-election campaign as a senior policy adviser.

Please refer to the flash media player below.

This interview can also be accessed at no cost via the Itunes Store by either searching for the "Intrepid Liberal Journal" or "Robert Ellman."

The Ultimate Organizer: An Interview With ACORN's Founder Wade Rathke

Rob Ellman — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 21:47:46 GMT

The topic below was originally posted on my blog, the Intrepid Liberal Journal.

It seems no matter which political party in America holds the majority, a Washington/Wall Street corporate centric axis dominates policy making. Indeed, Illinois Democratic Senator Dick Durbin recently observed that banks, "Frankly Own the Place." Among liberal-progressive activists like myself, this condition has facilitated a confrontational mindset.

Our experience suggests that the power and wealth concentrated in the hands of a few will not be voluntarily relinquished. Hence, everything from healthcare reform to bankruptcy protection for aggrieved homeowners is perceived by many of us as a high stakes pitched battle between struggling families and feculent corporate behemoths. Although activism has certainly facilitated important victories on behalf of working people, fighting for economic justice often seems analogous to climbing an endless wall.
Veteran activist Wade Rathke has been steadily climbing that wall on behalf of working people for forty-years. As the founder of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform ("ACORN"), Rathke has a unique perspective about what community organizing strategies work best to empower working people that are struggling to save and accumulate wealth. Rathke is also an assertive advocate for welfare benefits on behalf of people out of work. He's both won and lost more than his share of battles. Both he and ACORN have the battle scars of scrutiny liberals typically receive from standing up for America's poor and disenfranchised.

In Citizen Wealth: Winning the Campaign To Save Working Families, (Berrett-Koehler), Rathke writes,

"We need to create a national economic and political consensus that increasing family income, wealth and assets is not `welfare' or an entitlement `give-away' program but an investment in the public good and well-being."

His book is an accessible thirteen chapters and 171 pages of text presenting his blueprint to organize regular folks to win economic and political power. Rathke's book also contains revealing anecdotes about ACORN's negotiations with corporate entities such as H&R Block and their bank, HSBC, to end the predatory practice of Refund Anticipation Loans. Perhaps the most compelling topic in his book is covered in chapter nine when Rathke laments how millions of citizens eligible for Food Stamps, Medicaid and the State Children Health Insurance Program ("SCHIP") are disenfranchised from participating in the very programs designed to help them.

Rathke has remained involved with organizing activities after leaving ACORN in 2008. He is the founding board member of the Tides Foundation as well as the chief organizer of SEIU Local 100 in New Orleans and publisher of Social Policy magazine. He posts regularly at the Chief Organizer blog.

Rathke agreed to a telephone podcast interview with me about his book and among the topics covered is the meaning of citizen wealth, why economic justice has lagged behind expanded civil liberties for minorities and women, the methodology of ACORN's approach to fight H&R Block's predatory practices of Refund Anticipation Loans, the criticisms ACORN and the Community Reinvestment Act have received about the housing crisis and his belief that worker/labor organization is imperative for all segments of society. Our conversation was twenty-eight and a half minutes.

Please refer to the flash media player below.

This interview can also be accessed at no cost the Itunes Store by searching for either the "Intrepid Liberal Journal" or "Robert Ellman."

Living On $2 A Day: An Interview With Economist Jonathan Morduch

Rob Ellman — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 00:26:36 GMT

The topic below was originally posted on my blog, the Intrepid Liberal Journal.

According to the World Bank, almost forty percent of humanity lives on a daily income of less than two dollars per day. Another 1.1 billion scrape by on less than one dollar per day.

How can anyone possibly survive or raise a family with such a meager income? In New York City, two dollars per day won't even cover my daily Brooklyn/Manhattan round-trip subway commute. Yet billions of low skilled people put food on the table, educate their children, grapple with unexpected emergencies and even save money.

In Portfolios of the Poor: How the World's Poor Live On $2 a Day, Darryl Collins, Jonathan Morduch, Stuart Rutherford and Orlanda Ruthven, compiled yearlong "financial diaries," of villagers and slum dwellers in Bangladesh, India and South Africa. The diaries track penny by penny, how specific households manage their money with sophistication and resourcefulness. Recently published by Princeton University Press, Portfolios of the Poor, presents revealing data in an accessible seven chapters and 184 pages of text. The text is supported with an additional eighty plus pages of appendices, data tables and notes illustrating "the story behind the portfolios."

In a tour de force of primary research, the authors report that the world's poorest do not live hand to mouth and desperately spend what they earn just to keep from drowning. Instead, they utilize financial tools, rely on "informal" networks through relatives and neighbors and navigate perils such as medical calamities and political strife. Their stories are both inspiring as well as heartbreaking.

Although the world's poorest are far more adept at financial management then previously understood, they're confronted with what the authors describe as the "triple whammy":

1. Low income.
2. Irregularity of income.
3. Unpredictability about when they will earn income.

Hence, the authors assertively advocate for microfinancing as a means of empowering the world's poorest with more secure and convenient instruments to access and manage money. Microfinancing is financial services for low income clients in the world's poorest countries who are self-employed or operating their own businesses.

The authors argue in their book that microfinancing should also be extended to address the needs of exceptionally low-income wage earners as well. It is their contention that poor people in the countries they researched demonstrate on a daily basis that they are responsible money managers and would also be reliable clients of microfinancing services.

One of the authors, Jonathan Morduch, is a New York University ("NYU") professor of economics as well as a managing director of the Financial Access Initiative - a consortium of researchers at NYU, Harvard, Yale, and Innovations for Poverty Action. Morduch, agreed to a telephone podcast interview with me about the book and our conversation was just under twenty-six minutes.

Among the topics covered was how his team earned the confidence of the people interviewed, the informal market tools utilized by the world's poorest in Bangladesh, India and South Africa and why he's a proponent of extending microfinancing to the world's poorest wage earners.

Please refer to the flash media player below.

This interview can also be accessed at no cost via the Itunes Store by searching for either the "Intrepid Liberal Journal" or "Robert Ellman.

Billy Graham & the Rise of the Republican South: An Interview With Historian Steven P. Miller

Rob Ellman — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 23:51:26 GMT

The topic below was originally posted on my blog, the Intrepid Liberal Journal.

In the age of Barack Obama, both the Republican Party as well as the South appear marginalized and out of step with the rest of America. Yet it wasn't so long ago that the South represented the foundation of America's conservative hegemony. Starting with Dwight Eisenhower in 1952, the Republican Party prevailed in nine out of the next fourteen presidential elections with a reliable Southern base.

Specifically, the Republican Party exploited white Southern resentment against the cause of civil rights and integration. The "Southern strategy" as it was later called, enabled Republicans to end the Democratic Party's previous domination of the South following the Civil War. A key figure in that realignment was the renowned evangelist Billy Graham.

Historian, Steven P. Miller, first explored Billy Graham's role in this realignment with his doctorate thesis entitled, "The Politics of Decency: Billy Graham, Evangelicalism, and the End of the Solid South, 1950-1980." Miller later converted that thesis into his current book, Billy Graham and the Rise of the Republican South, recently published by the University of Pennsylvania Press. Miller's book delineates how Graham allowed his iconic celebrity to be used by national politicians so they could make inroads into the South. His book also details how Graham capitalized on his leverage as a regional heavyweight to influence presidents and policy.

With President Dwight Eisenhower, Graham had an ideological soul mate as both valued "moderation" between segregationists and those who championed integration. Graham believed that racism could not be overcome through legislation and the heavy hand of federal power. Instead, he advocated changing the hearts and minds of people "one soul at a time" through his integrated "crusades" where he preached his love thy neighbor gospel.

Under the presidencies of Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon, Graham straddled the fence between promoting racial tolerance and preserving local southern autonomy or "states rights." In that regard, Graham was an intimate part of Richard Nixon's inner circle after he became president in 1968. Graham's defenders argue that he helped the South transition from its shameful past while preserving stability. His critics claim that Graham was a cowardly apologist for white privilege who didn't do nearly enough to advance the cause of civil rights. Personally, like many liberals, I'm partial to the latter argument.

Ross Douthat writes in his April 19th review of Miller's book in the New York Times that,

"Neither story is the whole truth, but both are true. And it's a credit to Steven P. Miller that his `Billy Graham and the Rise of the Republican South,' a study of the evangelist's relationship to the cause of civil rights on the one hand and the cause of conservatism on the other, does justice to the tensions and complexities involved -- for Graham, for the South and for the country. In Miller's account, one of 20th-century America's most important religious leaders emerges as a representative political actor as well, whose example is worth pondering less because he was courageous than because he often wasn't.

The story of the civil rights era is usually told as a collision between heroes and villains: the marchers on one side and the K.K.K. on the other; the Martin Luther Kings and Lyndon Johnsons making the way straight for justice, and the George Wallaces and Bull Connors standing sneering in their way. But the movement's successes and failures were ultimately determined by the choices of more unheroic men -- men like Billy Graham."

Miller, who earned a PH.D degree in history from Vanderbilt University and has taught at numerous institutions, including Washington University, Webster University and Goshen College, agreed to a telephone podcast interview with me about his book and our conversation was just under thirty-six minutes.

Among the topics covered is the difference between hard core fundamentalism and evangelicalism, Graham's role in facilitating Republican inroads into the previously reliable Democratic South, whether his middle ground on civil rights was courageous or cowardly, Graham's alliance with Eisenhower, his friendship with Lyndon Johnson, the intimate collaboration with Richard Nixon and the legacy he left behind.

This interview can also be at accessed at no cost via the Itunes Store by searching for either the "Intrepid Liberal Journal" or "Robert Ellman."

Investigating Torture: An Interview With Former Federal Prosecutor Elizabeth de la Vega

Rob Ellman — Sat, 23 May 2009 00:36:27 GMT

The topic below was originally posted on my blog, the Intrepid Liberal Journal, on Monday, May 18th.

Former federal prosecutor Elizabeth de la Vega has recently made news urging that we don't rush into appointing a special prosecutor to investigate crimes of torture during George W. Bush's presidency. In a provocative April 20th post entitled "Of Black Holes and Radio Silence," Ms. de la Vega wrote:

"There is no doubt that sometime in 2002 - if not before - Bush administration officials and their lawyers began orchestrating a torture campaign, which they calculatedly attempted to justify through specious legal memos. They continued to abuse prisoners, and to conceal that mistreatment from Congress and the public, through at least 2008. In all of this conduct, they have committed grave crimes for which they must be held accountable. I believe this to be a national imperative of the highest order."

However, she also argues that,

"First, the bottom line: From the perspective of anyone who wants Bush and Cheney and their top aides to be held accountable for their crimes, the designation of some sort of independent prosecutor right now would be the worst possible eventuality. It's a move that has so many downsides - and holds so few real benefits - that I would be more inclined to question President Obama's motives if he appointed a special prosecutor than if he did not. There is a reason why former prosecutor Arlen Specter - a Republican senator from Pennsylvania - has voiced support for a special prosecutor, while former prosecutors Patrick Leahy and Sheldon Whitehouse - Democratic senators from Vermont and Rhode Island, respectively - would prefer a public inquiry."

Please note that Ms. de la Vega's post was written prior to Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter becoming a Democrat.

Overall, Ms. de la Vega contends that appointing a special prosecutor now would undermine the cause of truth and accountability. It is her contention that transparent and public hearings would facilitate more popular support for prosecuting wrong doers than currently exists. As she wrote on April 20th:

"What we continue to need, in sum, are unwavering spotlights, even more civic education, and, most importantly, an irrefutable and cohesive factual narrative - comprised of direct and circumstantial evidence - that links the highest-level officials and advisers of the Bush administration, ineluctably, to specific instances and victims of torture. What we will surely have, however, if a special prosecutor is named, will be precisely the opposite: The initiation of a federal grand jury investigation right now would be roughly the equivalent of ceremoniously dumping the entire issue of torture into a black hole. There will be nothing to see and we will be listening intently to radio silence, trying to make sense of intermittent static in the form of the occasional unreliable leak. For years. There may never be any charges and we will almost certainly never have the unimpeachable historical narrative that we need."

On May 10th, she posted a followed up piece entitled "Prosecuting Torture: Is Time Really running Out?"and argued that the statutory clock in section 2340A, otherwise known as the "torture statute" didn't start ticking until Bush's presidency ended on January 20, 2009 - when President Obama reversed our policies. Her May 10th post was in response to those who are clamoring for the immediate appointment of a special prosecutor because they claim the statute of limitations for torture crimes that began in 2002 were scheduled to expire in 2010.

Ms. de la Vega's position stems from her longtime experience as a federal prosecutor. She served as a Justice Department Attorney under Presidents Reagan, Bush I, Clinton and Bush II. She is the winner of numerous Attorney General's and community awards, including the prestigious Director's Award for Superior Performance. For over twenty-years, Ms. de la Vega targeted violent gangsters and sophisticated white-collar criminals in Minneapolis where she served as an Assisted United States Attorney and San Jose, where she was Branch Chief and a member of the Organized Crime Strike Force.

Since retiring from government service in 2004, Ms. de la Vega has been among the most vocal in pushing for accountability on a broad range of crimes allegedly committed during the Bush administration. In 2006, her book, the United States vs. George W. Bush, et al was a New York Times best seller. A year ago, Ms. de la Vega wrote an incisive piece supporting Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich's thirty-five articles of impeachment against President Bush.

She has also contributed to numerous print and online publications, including the Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor, Nation magazine, Chicago Sun-Times, Mother Jones, Common Dreams, TomDispatch, Truthout and Alternet.

Ms. de la Vega agreed to a telephone podcast interview with me about her views with respect to investigating torture and support for public transparency. Special thanks to Vern Radul, known in the blogosphere as Edger where he manages Antemedius.com for persuading Ms. de la Vega for doing the interview. Our conversation was just under twenty-minutes as I posed numerous devil's advocate questions. Please refer to the flash media player below.

This interview can also be accessed at no cost via the Itunes store by searching for either "Robert Ellman" or the "Intrepid Liberal Journal."

The Next Justice: An Interview With Legal Scholar Christopher L. Eisgruber

Rob Ellman — Sat, 23 May 2009 00:30:21 GMT

The topic below was originally posted on my blog, the Intrepid Liberal Journal on Sunday, May 17th.

President Obama will soon announce his nominee to replace retiring Justice David Souter on the Supreme Court. It's a critical nomination with long-term ramifications for civil liberties, executive power, management-labor relations, the environment and consumer rights. Hence, it is vital the public know whether the judicial philosophy and ideology of any prospective nominee to the court is compatible with their sensibilities and values. Ideally, all nominees would be forthcoming about their philosophy as the senate either confirms or rejects them with full knowledge of the sort of justice they're likely to be.
Regrettably, that hasn't occurred since the 1987 Senate confirmation hearings for Robert Bork. At the time, Bork scared the hell out of me and I'm grateful his nomination was not approved. Even so, I always respected how Bork was upfront about his ideology and judicial philosophy. Bork didn't hide what he was and the American public and the Senate had a clear picture of what sort of justice he would be.

Sadly, since the Bork nomination fight, our Supreme Court appointments process has become a Kabuki dance existing in an alternate reality. Nominees are conditioned to reveal as little as possible about their judicial philosophies or even avoid acknowledging they have one. A pitiful example is Chief Justice John Roberts who famously compared Supreme Court justices with baseball umpires during his 2005 Senate confirmation hearings:

"Judges are like umpires. Umpires don't make the rules; they apply them. The role of an umpire and a judge is critical. They make sure everybody plays by the rules. But it is a limited role. Nobody ever went to a ballgame to see the umpire."

Contrary to John Roberts' testimony, a Supreme Court justice has a unique and expansive role in our society. The Constitution contains too many abstract references and clauses for any justice to merely adhere to the rules based on a strict interpretation of the text. An example is the Constitution's Equal Protection Clause. As the highly regarded legal scholar, Christopher L. Eisgruber, observes in his 2007 book, The Next Justice: Repairing the Supreme Court Appointments Process (Princeton University Press) the Equal Protection Clause reads,

"'No state shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.'

How should judges interpret this clause? Presumably, they must ask what it means for the laws to protect people equally. Yet that question takes judges straight to the nerve center of American ideological controversy. Liberals and conservatives disagree passionately about what it means for the laws to protect groups equally and about when it is appropriate for the laws to treat one group better than another."

Overall, Eisgruber argues that due to the Constitution's many vague abstractions, a Supreme Court justice is disproportionately influenced by their individual values and ideology in determining when it's appropriate for the court to intervene and even overrule our country's prior laws. How could it be otherwise when the Constitution's text is frequently subject to broad interpretation as with the Equal Opportunity Clause? Hence, it is imperative the senate determines if the judicial philosophy of a Supreme Court nominee is representative of the country.

Some legal scholars such as Yale law professor Stephen Carter have argued that nominees to the Supreme Court should simply stay home because their testimony has ceased to contribute anything substantive. There is definitely merit to Carter's point of view. Nominees since Robert Bork typically speak only in vague platitudes about practicing "judicial restraint" and are ultimately voted up or down based upon their reassuring television appeal.

Eisgruber however argues in his book that the senate should ask more open-ended questions of prospective nominees about their judicial philosophies. Too often senators attempt to trap nominees with "gotcha" questions or ask about specific issues such as abortion that that can easily be deflected to "preserve their integrity" prior to joining the Supreme Court. Ultimately, little is learned and unless opposition interest groups get any traction or a scandal emerges, the nominee is likely to sail through without defending or explaining their ideology.

One example of the sort of question Eisgruber suggests asking is,

"The late Chief Justice William Rehinquist wrote that `manifold provisions of the Constitution with which judges must deal are by no means crystal clear in their import, and reasonable minds may differ as to which interpretation is proper.' Could you tell us something about the values and purposes that will guide you when you interpret provisions like the Equal Protection Clause? How do those values and purposes distinguish your approach from those taken by other justices?"

Eisgruber contends this approach has a better chance of determining the sort of justice a nominee is likely to be. He also argues that it will facilitate more moderate nominees and discourage stealth extremists.

Eisgruber, who previously clerked for U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Patrick E. Higginbortham (a conservative) and Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens (a liberal), agreed to a podcast interview with me over the telephone about his book. Among the topics discussed were the insights he gained clerking for two ideologically different judges, the importance of justice's philosophy about judicial review, President Obama's desire for a justice with "empathy" and whether we might have a justice who did not serve in the appellate courts. I also asked him numerous questions from my liberal perspective, including whether ideological balance on the court would be better served by appointing assertive liberals instead of moderates.

Please refer to the flash media player below.

This interview can also be accessed at no cost via the Itunes store by searching for either the "Intrepid Liberal Journal" or "Robert Ellman."

Also, the flash media player may not be visible to all users of Internet Explorer at WWS. Those readers may find it more convenient to access a flash media player for this interview on my blog.

Getting away with Murder: Whatever happened to 'above all, do no harm'?

Jason Miller — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 00:51:41 GMT

By Jason Miller

"The moral is that animal model systems not only kill animals, they also kill humans. There is no good factual evidence to show that the use of animals in cancer research has led to the prevention or cure of a single human cancer."

~~Dr. Irwin D.J. Bross, Ph.D., 1982, former head of research design and analysis of the largest cancer research institute in the world, the Sloan~~Kettering Institute

Vivisection, the anachronistic practice of condemning nonhuman animals to the sterility, isolation, and confinement of laboratory cages and subjecting them to cutting, poking, sticking, burning, poisoning, and addicting, bears a much closer resemblance to medieval torture than to 21st century scientific research. Fittingly, vivisection's history is rooted in medieval religious edicts that forbade the dissection of human cadavers.[1] And anthropocentrism is so deeply inculcated into our psyches that despite living in an "enlightened" age, we continue with our collective barbarism based on a church doctrine that held that rotting human corpses were more sacred than living, breathing sentient beings.
Like the primitive religious dogma that spawned it, vivisection is a relic of the past that has out-lived its usefulness, if it ever had any. From an animal liberationist's standpoint there are no moral justifications for performing experiments on nonhuman animals, but even when considered from an intelligent hardened speciesist's perspective, vivisection is a detrimental practice, for it is a tremendous waste of time, money and effort, and it is more of a threat to human health than it is a safeguard.

Because of the many significant anatomical, physiological, genetic, and behavioral differences between species, tests performed on nonhuman animals are only 5% to 25% accurate in terms of predicting the impact the tested drug or treatment will have on humans[2] and a 1994 study that appeared in the SCRIP report determined that only 6 of 114 substances that were toxic to humans were also toxic to nonhuman animals.[3] Nonhuman animals are extremely poor correlates for people.

According to Pro Anima of France, over a million people die prematurely in the EU each year from toxic substances introduced into their food or environment that were animal tested and deemed safe.[4]

Millions of nonhuman animals are tortured and murdered every year to ensure our "safety" when we take prescription drugs. Just how safe are we? Consider that adverse drug reactions (ADRs) are the fourth leading cause of death, 15% of hospital admissions are related to ADRs, prescription drugs kill over 100,000 people every year (more than street drugs), and ADRs cost us over $130 billion in medical expenses every year.[5]

In December of 2003, Dr. Allen Roses, worldwide vice-president of genetics for GlaxoSmithKline, the UK's largest pharmaceutical manufacturer, admitted the severe limitations of the prescription drugs for which so many nonhuman animals are sacrificed when he stated, "The vast majority of drugs - more than 90 per cent - only work in 30 or 50 per cent of the people," Dr Roses said. "I wouldn't say that most drugs don't work. I would say that most drugs work in 30 to 50 per cent of people. Drugs out there on the market work, but they don't work in everybody."[6]

For a host of other examples (too numerous to cite in this essay) that reveal the antiquated and crude nature of the results derived from vivisection, see the 2007 report called "Do No Harm" that was prepared by the AD-AV Society of British Columbia in September of 2007.[7]

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the most barbaric of them all?

I abhor vivisection with my whole soul. All the scientific discoveries stained with innocent blood I count as of no consequence.

--Gandhi

So why, in defiance of conscience and logic, does such a heinous and grossly ineffective research method predominate and persist? Look no further than money, the lifeblood of our pitiless, narcissistic culture of death.

Were the vivisection subjects human, angry mobs bearing torches and pitch-forks would storm the corporate and scholastic castle gates, putting the modern day Frankenstein labs out of business. But since vivisection's victims are "mere" nonhuman animals, corporations and universities persist in inflicting unimaginable suffering on millions of sentient beings every year.[8] In doing so, they enjoy relative approval or indifference from most of the general public, and both endorsement and protection from a deeply corrupt legal system and from law enforcement entities that "protect and serve" corporations and private property above all. And when the distressingly scarce moral outrage does boil over and manifest itself as a direct action against the property of vivisectors, the FBI declares the perpetrators "domestic terrorists" and pursues them accordingly.[9]

Gandhi was right to "abhor vivisection with all [his] soul." It is one of many extraordinarily ruthless activities that our capitalist, speciesist "civilization" encourages, enables, and, in some ways, demands. Our prevailing and predominating social, cultural, economic, and political beliefs, mechanisms, customs, traditions, and myths inform and drive our collective alienation from, hatred towards, and fear of nature, nonhuman animals, and ultimately, ourselves and each other.

It's true, as many argue, that capitalism wasn't the progenitor of oppression and exploitation. It is merely the latest (and most effective) means by which humanity legitimizes and implements them. With the dawn of "civilization" about 10,000 years ago, we humans began fetishizing our intellectual prowess and tenaciously clinging to the delusion that we are superior beings with the right to dominate the Earth and its other inhabitants. Rather than following anything close to a straight and narrow moral path with respect to our nonhuman animal brethren, delusions of grandeur and a pathological self-centeredness have left the human species stumbling about like a drunken sailor, kicking, stabbing, crushing, using, abusing, and eating virtually any other sentient being unfortunate enough to find itself in our path.

Money is the root of this evil

Our species lost its way long ago and vivisection is a symptom of the diseased way in which we interact with the world around us. Thanks to the twin socioeconomic foundations of speciesism and capitalism, vivisectors, their patrons, and their beneficiaries are, in many instances, psychologically, legally, and socially "justified," and their despicable efforts are highly lucrative, thus ensuring the malignant persistence of vivisection.

Despite exciting breakthroughs in genetics and other areas of science, and the rapid development of technologies that make vivisection antiquated and obsolete, it persists, not because it brings "truth," but rather because it is highly profitable up and down throughout the long chain of "research." There is tremendous peer-pressure and academic inertia to continue confining and torturing other sentient beings without their consent for several reasons, but aside from the facts that vivisection is a deeply entrenched orthodoxy which is handed down from one generation of researchers to the next and that nonhuman animal research is easily published (no small incentive to practice it in the 'publish or perish' environments of universities), vivisection generates and protects income.

While many vivisectors and their supporters assert that nonhuman animal research is a noble endeavor that has saved millions of human animal lives over the years, the reality is that vivisection is an undeniably cruel practice that produces abysmal results.

Yet, vivisection continues to be highly regarded and heavily promoted within the mainstream medical and scientific communities, as many universities have come to depend mightily upon the multi-million dollar grants they receive to fund nonhuman animal research, even that which is frivolous or redundant. Take UCLA for example. At the time of this writing, it is widely known that one of their despicable vivisectors, David Jentsch, addicts vervet monkeys to PCP and methamphetamines, an obviously perverse thing to do to another sentient being. Yet Jentsch and UCLA are pressing on, even in the face of militant direct action undertaken by groups like the Animal Brigade and the Justice Department.

For a more detailed examination of the graft that propels universities to continue torturing nonhuman animals, read "Granting Wishes: The Truth Behind Why We Vivisect Animals"[10] by Michael Budkie, the director of Stop Animal Exploitation NOW.

Big Pharma, one of the largest supporters and beneficiaries of nonhuman animal research, uses its significant influence-an influence derived from deep pockets and even deeper incestuous relationships with legislators, government regulators, peer-reviewed medical journals, publicly funded institutions, and doctors[11]-to sustain the lie that it would be impossible to innovate and market new prescription drugs without vivisection. Poison Pill, a book by Tom Nesi, provides an industry insider's deconstruction of how Merck was able to bring Vioxx, a drug that has potentially killed tens of thousands of people, to market.[12] To these leviathan pharmaceutical corporations, vivisection's barbarity and inefficacy are irrelevant. To ensure the uninterrupted flow of their immense profits, they need scientists to torture and murder nonhuman animals to accelerate the drug approval process, to give consumers the illusion of safety, and to shield themselves from tort liability.[13]

And let's not forget the host of ancillary business entities that exploit nonhuman animals via vivisection to generate their sacrosanct profits. These include companies that breed (or capture) and sell nonhuman animal research subjects to vivsectors,[14] companies that perform vivisection as a form of outsourcing,[15] cage manufacturers, scientific equipment makers, and many others. There are droves of people who are more than happy to enable the intense suffering of sentient being so they can reap their profits.

Excrement by any other name would smell as foul....

Like most corrupt and malevolent industries (i.e. agribusiness and tobacco), the animal research complex has its own corporate-financed front groups to peddle its propaganda to the public, extolling its alleged virtues and justifying its miserable existence. Americans for Medical Progress is one such group. Their website states:

"Americans for Medical Progress (AMP) protects society's investment in research by nurturing public understanding of and support for the humane, necessary and valuable use of animals in medicine. Threats by animal rights extremists hurt medical progress. AMP provides accurate and incisive information to foster a balanced public debate on the animal research issue, ensuring that among the voices heard are those whose lives have been touched by research and those who work in the field. Through various specialty publications, outreach initiatives and the media, AMP informs the public of the facts of animal-based research. AMP also distributes timely and relevant news, information and analysis about animal rights extremism to the research community through its news service. AMP is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit charity supported by the nation's top universities, private research facilities, research-related businesses, scientific and professional societies, as well as by foundation grants."

Abbott Laboratories, AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Wyeth, and GlaxoSmithKline have representatives on AMP's board of directors to protect the interests of Big Pharma. Charles River Laboratories, the vivisection industry's number one supplier of nonhuman animals for testing, has been described as the "General Motors of the laboratory animal industry." According to SourceWatch, nearly all of the corporations and universities on the board of AMP have been under fire for serious animal welfare violations.[16]
AMP also supports the allegedly grassroots group, Speaking of Research, which held a rally supporting vivisection at UCLA on April 22, 2009. In that nauseating spectacle the unapologetic monkey-torturer, David Jentsch, and industry shill Tom Holder, the "founder" of Speaking of Research and a "founding member" of Pro-Test in the UK, whipped a crowd of adoring sycophants into a frenzy with a chant calling for animal testing.

Speaking of Research's website states that they are a "campus-oriented group that seeks to provide university students and faculty with accurate information and resources about the importance of animal research in medical science."

It goes on to state:

"Inspired by the successful British student movement "Pro-test" (www.pro-test.org.uk), Speaking of Research aims to change the tide of the controversial animal rights debate by encouraging students and scientists to speak out in favor of the lifesaving research developed with animals.

Pro-test's experiences have shown that an informed public will rally together against animal rights extremism and come out to support scientists in their use of animals in lifesaving biomedical research. Recent polls in the UK suggest that public support for animal research for medical purposes has reached nearly 90%. Consequently animal rights groups have seen a decline in support, leading to a decline in extremist actions. Speaking of Research seeks to mobilize American universities to make the same stand against animal rights extremists and the misinformation they spread. We aim to encourage students and scientists to raise their heads above the parapet in open support of scientists and their research.

Speaking of Research aims to challenge animal rights dominance of the issue by participating in talks and debates on campuses across the country and by utilizing web-based communications tools to organize a network that can provide encouragement, information and support to all who care about medical progress."

AMP and Speaking of Research are both well-funded marketing machines that are quite adept at putting lipstick on a pig. And why wouldn't they be? They represent vivisectors of all stripes, including those who test cosmetics.

Above all, do no harm?

"I am not interested to know whether vivisection produces results that are profitable to the human race. The pain which it inflicts upon unconsenting animals is the basis of my enmity toward it, and it is to me sufficient justification of the enmity without looking further."

-Mark Twain

As deeply reviled as the Nazis are by most people, those who master-minded the Holocaust were products of the nonhuman animal exploitation industries, as they derived many of their "extermination" techniques from slaughterhouses and farming.[17] And when the Nazi doctors were tried at Nuremberg for human vivisection, they stated that they learned their techniques on nonhuman animals. Nazism is perhaps the most extreme example, but there is abundant empirical evidence to reasonably conclude that "man's inhumanity to man," which has plagued us since the dawn of civilization, is informed and driven by "man's inhumanity to animal."

Conceptualizing sentient beings who are subjects of a life as mere objects (cute, cuddly, and furry objects though they may be) reduces them to property status. While they may not admit it, even to themselves, those who support or engage in vivisection view nonhuman animals as mere possessions, resources, and commodities. In the prevailing institutions and paradigm of speciesist capitalism the "owners" of animals have the "right" to oppress and exploit them to the extent that it's necessary to derive the maximum profit and benefit. In this depraved and insane system, living beings are viewed by society at large and the legal system as possessions to do with as they see fit. And those, like Rod Coronado,[18] who act to alleviate their suffering by freeing them or dealing their tormentors a financial blow are hunted down and imprisoned.

The truth of the matter is that no matter what attitudes, institutions, systems, laws, mandates, or justifications we cultivate or erect, we human beings have no right to intentionally inflict suffering upon other sentient beings, particularly through vivisection, much of which is ostensibly performed to achieve medical advancements. What happened to, "Above all, do no harm"?

Eventually, we must excise the metastasizing cancer of speciesist capitalism before it reduces the Earth to a dismal dystopia, or worse, eradicates most or all sentient life on the planet. And as we proceed toward that goal, we can aggressively treat vivisection, one of our diseased civilization's worst symptoms.

And as we do so, consider that, "Drs. Ray and Jean Greek, and others, have pointed out that the theory of evolution and molecular biology predict that animal models will be very poor models of human disease. In light of modern scientific thought and the mass of empirical data, the burden of proof lies with those who claim the animal model is productive."[19]

As we human animals overcome the deeply indoctrinated lies that we are the master species and that the pursuit of money is our raison d'etre, we will realize that we don't need to enslave nonhuman animals, subject them to horrific suffering, or murder them. We have multiple other means by which we can advance our medical and scientific knowledge, including epidemiology, clinical testing, autopsies, biopsies, genetics, post-marketing drug research, computer modeling, tissue cultures, microdosing on human animals, personalized medicine, and nanotechnology.[20]

Vivisection is primitive, brutal, ineffective, and unconscionable. It puts human animals at risk and inflicts unfathomable degrees of unnecessary suffering on our nonhuman animal brethren. There are many ways to advance our medical and scientific knowledge that don't involve tormenting or killing other sentient beings. Money is about the only thing vivisection has going for it. Which explains why those of us who oppose it will have to fight so hard to put an end to such an abomination.

Jason Miller is a relentless anti-capitalist, vegan straight edge, animal liberationist, and press officer for the North American Animal Liberation Press Office. He is also the senior editor and founder of Thomas Paine's Corner.

Thomas Paine's Corner wants to periodically email you links to the most recent material and timeless classics available on our diverse and comprehensive site. If you would like to receive them, type "TPC subscription" in the subject line and send your email to

willpowerful@hotmail.com
For the latest updates on the animal liberation movement, visit NAALPO at http://www.animalliberationpre...

If you have a Facebook account, don't forget to look up Thomas Paine's Corner's Facebook page via the "search" feature and become a fan.

And if you have a MySpace account, don't forget to friend Thomas Paine's Corner at www.myspace.com/anarchovegan.

References:

1][2 http://www.shac.net/science/in...

3][4 http://www.animalaid.org.uk/im...

5][6 http://www.independent.co.uk/n...

7][8 http://www.mercyforanimals.org...

9][10 http://www.all-creatures.org/s...

11][12 http://www.tomnesi.org/press.htm

13][14 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...

15][16 http://www.sourcewatch.org/ind...

17][18 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...

19][20 ibid

Banned in the UK! How the Home Office "Protects the Public Good"

Jason Miller — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 22:31:32 GMT

By Steve Best

"God save the Queen
the fascist regime
they made you a moron
a potential H-bomb.

Oh God save history
God save your mad parade
Oh Lord God have mercy
all crimes are paid.
When there's no future
how can there be sin
we're the flowers
in the dustbin
we're the poison
in your human machine
we're the future
you're future." - Sex Pistols

Prelude

"The thing worse than rebellion is the thing that causes rebellion." -Frederick Douglass

I have a deep, abiding, ethical concern with the suffering of animals. In the late 1980s, when I was a committed human rights activist, the animal rights struggle became my ultimate choice and existential meaning. The more I learned about the enormity of animal suffering, the more radical my positions became, shifting from animal welfare to animal rights to animal liberation, and finally to total liberation politics that articulates human, animal, and Earth liberation struggles as an inseparable unity that must be conceived of and fought for together.

In 1999, I decided to take a public and very controversial stand in support of the Animal Liberation Front (ALF). This group emerged in England in 1976, and quickly spread throughout the world, such that it is now active in over three dozen countries.[1] The ALF is the newest anti-slavery and abolitionist struggle on the planet; ALF principles are rooted in a rights framework that rejects any form of animal exploitation as unjust and renounces all welfarist attempts to regulate rather than to wreck institutions of oppression as unacceptable and antithetical to liberationist goals.

The ALF is an underground movement that operates in decentralized and autonomous cells unknown to the aboveground world and to all other cells as well. Typically working at night and always covered by black masks, setting right the wrong inscribed in the law, the ALF breaks into laboratories, compound, and cages of any kind to free animals from their captors and tormentors. The ALF uses tactics of economic sabotage or property destruction to undermine or eliminate the ability of individuals and industries to exploit animals for profit. Despite using tactics of sabotage and even arson, the ALF adheres to a nonviolent ethic that attacks the property of exploiters, but never the exploiters themselves.

After careful study of the ALF's history, philosophy, ethics, and tactics, and after consideration of their goals and results, I concluded that such as approach is defensible, just, and highly effective, and thereby should play a vital and respected role in the animal rights movement. Governments, corporate exploiters, much of the media and public, and even many so-called "animal advocates" themselves characterize the ALF as violent terrorists, but I see them as freedom fighters and counter-terrorists. The ALF is part of a new peace and justice movement defending innocent beings under attack and fighting the real terrorists who torture and kill animals without justification.

Against a repressively established social "consensus," I argue that ALF actions are defensible because (1) what happens to animals is wrong, and (2) legal channels to stop it are blocked by speciesism and corrupt governments that support the property rights of industries over the moral rights of animals.

I believe that no door, no law, no cop, no government, and no profit margin should stand in the way between an animal and its freedom. I wish that legal methods of animal liberation were adequate to free animals from their oppressors, but they are not. Governments are corrupt and speciesist and serve their corporate masters. Animals are too important a resource and commodity for corporations to voluntarily free them, and so animal liberation requires militant tactics such as raids to rescue animals and sabotage (property destruction) to weaken and eliminate oppressors.

Social change does not come about through moral persuasion or legislative initiatives, but rather through one kind of force and pressure or another. No human liberation movement has ever won its cause except by using threats, force, confrontational tactics, and violence, so why should it be any different for the animal liberation movement?

The New Civil War

"Many activists do not understand the revolutionary nature of this movement. We are fighting a major war, defending animals and our very planet from human greed and destruction." -David Barbarash, former ALF Press Officer

Anyone who follows the animal liberation movement in England knows that the direct action element has become increasingly powerful since the 1970s. By abandoning often futile efforts to influence oppressors through feeble protests and appeals to government, and by taking the fight directly to the animal exploiters themselves, groups such as the Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC), SPEAK (originally named Stop Primate Experiments at Cambridge), and Save the Newchurch Guinea Pigs (SNGP) have developed highly effective campaigns against all facets of the vivisection industry, a primary target of attack.

If you want to know what a possible future civil war over animal rights might look like, gaze no farther than England. In the last decade, for instance, pro-hunting forces have mounted massive demonstrations against bans on fox-hunting that were ultimately passed. In September 2004, pro-hunters stormed into central London where they clashed with animal activists, mixed it up with police, and broke into Parliament and disrupted a meeting in session. The struggles stem in part from a culture war whereby traditional rural values are attacked by modern urban values informed by an ethic of animal rights.

Similarly, in the last decade, activists have come after the vivisection industry with tornadic force, attacking it in the countryside and cities, in the village farms and university laboratories. Liberationists have shut down numerous lab animal breeders, stopped the construction of a new vivisection complex in Cambridge, and nearly achieved the same stunning results at Oxford University. They have captured the social spotlight and mounted a formidable threat to research and testing companies of huge economic importance. The biomedical and pharmaceutical industries are the third largest contributor to the British economy, and the animal liberation movement has foiled the UK's plans to be the epicenter for such research. Consequently, the state takes any threat to its economic interests quite seriously, and has responded to the challenge in kind.

As a result of their many victories, however, the animal liberation movement in England and elsewhere has entered into a war, but ultimately this is a war that humans started against animals ten thousand years ago. As animal exploitation grows ever more extreme, so too do the actions taken to stop it, and this elicits increasingly harsh response from the state which has become outright fascist in its crackdown on free speech, dissent, and protest. On all sides the gloves are coming off, and an increasingly volatile war is brewing in the UK, as well as the US and other hot zones of struggle over the rights of nature.

The "Terrorist Training Camp"

"Direct action is always the clamorer, the initiator, through which the great sum of indifferentists become aware that oppression is getting intolerable." -Voltairine de Cleyre

In the summer of 2004, SHAC was organizing the International Animal Rights Conference which brought together hard-core activists from a host of European countries. Along with veterans of the English animal liberation movement such as Ronnie Lee, the founder of the ALF; and Keith Mann, a seasoned ALF activist and former political prisoner, SHAC invited a few prominent US activists. Those honored with an invitation to speak included former ALF warrior Rod Coronado, trauma surgeon Dr. Jerry Vlasak, actress and activist Pam Ferdin, and yours truly, a writer and philosophy professor.

Assembling a few hundred animal rights militants in a secluded area of the English countryside unavoidably elicited intense interest and attention. The European media ludicrously dubbed the planned event a "terrorist training camp," evoking images of Al Qaeda soldiers running through obstacle courses and firing guns, except with purple hair, body piercings, and tattoos. In fact, the gathering was like any other conference, except held outdoors in the fields rather than in posh hotels. Activists from countries such as France, Amsterdam, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Germany, Russia, and the US shared stories and experiences, showed videotapes, gave talks and workshops, and addressed a wide scope of issues relating to the history, philosophy, politics, and tactics of the global animal liberation movement.

Once the British government caught wind of the conference, however, it took whatever repressive actions it could and the easiest targets were the invited speakers from the US. Thus, on official government stationary that proclaimed its commitment to openness and diversity (!), we all received "Minded to Exclude" letters from the Home Office, the UK equivalent of the US Department of Homeland Security. The letters detailed specific things each of us had allegedly said, written, or done in support of animal liberation. In the gentlemanly way of the English, the Home Office granted us the opportunity to explain and justify our positions, and stated that they would ban us from entering any part of the UK if they did not find our defense credible. They were signed by David Blunkett, just a few months before he was forced to resign over allegations that he had fast-tracked the visa application of his ex-lover's nanny (!).

Pen Pals with David

"The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing." -John Adams

Regarding my own case, I received the following letter from Blunkett's Home Office on July 29, 2004, a month before the conference. Even though the British government prohibited public viewing of the missive, I am delighted to share it.

Dear Professor Best:

The Secretary of State for the Home Department has been made aware that you intend to visit the United Kingdom to attend the International Animal Rights Conference 2004 between 3 and 6 September 2004.

The Secretary of State is aware that you are an academic involved in the animal rights campaign. He has taken note of an article written by you entitled "You Don't Support the ALF Because Why?" In that article you are quoted as confirming your support for the Animal Liberation Front and that you support the destruction of industrial properties engaged in the animal research field. You have said that you do not consider property destruction as violence but even if it is, violence is defensible in certain cases. You have also confirmed your support for the underground direct action tactics of the ALF.

In light of the above, the Secretary of State considers that you provide the intellectual justification for those in the animal rights movement to engage in violent acts in order to further their cause and has indicated that he is minded to exclude you from the United Kingdom on the basis that your presence in this country is not conducive to the public good for reasons of public order.

You are invited to make representations to the Home Secretary on why you should not be excluded. Any representations should be sent directly to this office. These should be submitted to reach this office no later that two weeks from the date of this letter.

Whilst your case is being considered, you should not attempt to enter the United Kingdom.

Yours Sincerely,

The Secretary of State

Stunning. I was possibly being banned from the UK for exercising my right to speak out against the real terrorists whose barbarities were protected by the power of the state. I was under attack for the crime of compassion toward animals and defending the defenseless. In their hysterical, Orwellian mindset, I was deemed a threat to the "public good" and "public order." In case I was snoozing, I was rudely awakened to the realities of the Bush/Blair regimes and the 1984 dystopia of state surveillance and totalitarian suppression of dissent. The Home Office was threatening to annul my right to free speech as well the right of their own citizens to hear controversial viewpoints.

After a thousand deep breaths, I penned my requested response.

Dear Mr. Blunkett and the Home Office:

As a citizen in a leading "democracy" hearing from a government official in another leading "democracy" that I could be banned merely for exercising my rights to free speech, I honestly am shocked beyond belief. My remarks may be controversial, but they are not illegal and do not warrant the harsh action you are contemplating.

I do not deny writing the words you cite; I posted the essay you refer to on my web site for the public, or any government officials such as yourself, to read. I do not disavow my belief in the justice of animal rights or the ALF. I respect your concerns for "public order" and the "public good," given the intensity of passion flaring on both sides of the animal liberation issue. I hope I can persuade you that you have nothing to fear by my presence in your country. Indeed, by diminishing the opportunity for free expression, I fear that you yourselves might injure the public good and public order in England because surely this will inflame the situation there.

I support the ALF, but I do not advocate violence in the sense of causing physical harm to another human being. Because they attack the property of animal exploiters, and never the exploiters themselves, I consider the ALF to be a non-violent organization. Just to be clear, I am not a member of the ALF. I am a philosophy professor who writes about, and often expresses support for, social justice and liberation movements

It is true that I have provided an "intellectual justification" for the ALF, but then again so does any modern democratic constitution or bill of rights, so did J.S. Mill, Mohandas Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., along with anyone who promoted concepts such as rights or justice that can be used on behalf of the ALF. Moreover, the ALF and other direct activists hardly need or await my justifications to act, so I don't quite see how my words have inflammatory potential.

I have never incited violence against anyone. I believe that both the US and UK should allow their citizens a great deal of latitude in the exercise of free speech, including defending organizations that use property destruction as a tactic to win justice for animals. As long as my speech does not incite others to violence where there is an immediate possibility of such violence, I believe it is arbitrary, unwarranted, and discriminatory to ban me from England. I clearly did not cross this line in the essay you cite, nor have I anywhere else.

In this threatened ban, you are heading down a dangerous slippery slope. Would you also ban Professor Peter Singer, for his defense of euthanasia and infanticide, also illegal acts? Would you ban Professor Tom Regan, another leading US animal rights philosopher and activist who wrote an essay in one of my books (Terrorists or Freedom Fighters?) entitled "How to Argue for Violence"? Just where do you stop after barring from your country philosophers without criminal records?

I urge England not to make the same mistakes made by my own government. In the dark times of the USA PATRIOT Act, the Bush administration has gutted the Constitution and Bill of Rights in the name of fighting "terrorism." After 9-11, the US government illegally detained thousands of foreigners as terrorist suspects. Except a precious few, they remain in prison without rights to legal council or a hearing of the charges brought against them. This dragnet netted only one suspected terrorist, by pure luck. Similarly, the provisions introduced under the UK's Anti-Terrorism Crime and Security Act 2001 have done little to make Britain safe from terrorist attack and much to infringe on the civil liberties of those living in the UK.

It is frightening to see England follow the same path of the US in the surveillance of activists and repression of civil liberties in the name of domestic security. The recent involvement of the FBI in Britain's domestic "security" affairs is hardly reassuring, as their specialty in the US has been to suppress democracy and disrupt political organizations.

England has a long and distinguished history of democracy that must not be extinguished. From the Diggers to the suffragettes to the animal liberation movement, struggles in England have advanced democracy, rights, and moral evolution for our species as a whole. Facing a second prison sentence in the Bastille for his satires of the government, Voltaire sought shelter in England in 1726-1729. He subsequently described to the world how much more free, liberal, and advanced England was than his native France. In the 1840s, Karl Marx was expelled from several European countries for advocating free speech, workers' democracy, and, indeed, global revolution, but he found a safe haven in England.

Such examples of the progressive heritage of England could be multiplied many times over. I urge you to grant Dr. Jerry Vlasak, Pamelyn Ferdin, and me safe passage into your country to attend the International Animal Rights Conference 2004. This is a peaceful and legal gathering. It is this ban that you are proposing, not my words, that is "not conducive to the public good."

If you do not respect our right to free speech, or the right of your own people to hear free speech, your words stand a far greater chance than my own of offending the public good by damaging democracy. This will have a chilling effect on free speech that far transcends my own case, for when academics and others learn they may be banished from international travel for exercising their right to free speech, they may well practice self-censorship. You may not like my free speech but it poses no credible threat to you that warrants harsh retaliations such as a ban.

Most Sincerely,

Dr. Steven Best
Chair, Department of Philosophy
University of Texas
El Paso, Texas, USA

From 9/11 to 7/7: Police States Capitalize on Tragedy

"Anarchy for the UK
It's coming sometime and maybe
I give a wrong time stop a traffic line.
Your future dream is a shopping scheme
cause I wanna be anarchy,
It's in the city." -Sex Pistols

For legal reasons pertaining to prior hunt sab arrests, Rod Coronado could not leave his home in Tucson, Arizona. Despite letters of appeal, Dr. Jerry Vlasak was excluded for an incidental conference statement `that since violence has been a part of all past human liberation movements, one could expect the same for the animal liberation movement.' Blunkett banned Pam Ferdin as well, citing her prior arrest for possession of a "deadly weapon" - a bull hook (used by circus trainers to terrorize elephants in "training" sessions) which was nothing more than a protest prop.

But for some odd reason, the Home Office granted me free passage into England. I had mixed emotions about this. On the one hand, I was proud to represent the militant face of animal rights in the US and delighted to be able to return among some great activists in the UK. On the other hand, I was somewhat embarrassed for not being militant enough to be considered a threat to a repressive state! Then again, perhaps I was nothing more than an alibi, a pawn in a propaganda ploy to give authoritarians the appearance of being fair and reasonable.

So I attended the conference, had an amazing time, and was thrilled to be invited back to speak again in September 2005. My second visit was imperiled, however, by the "7/7" (July 7, 2005) terrorist bombings in London that targeted civilians in buses and in the underground trains. Similar to the US response to 9/11, the UK took advantage of a terrible tragedy to crack down even harder on dissent. The state struck particularly hard against their main target - not the Muslim extremists, but rather the animal rights movement.

After the 7/7 bombings, the new Home Office Secretary, Charles Clarke, announced that the "rules of the game have changed." The Home Office drafted new "rules of unacceptable speech" that apply to any non-UK citizen alleged to promote, defend, justify, or advocate "violence" or "terrorism" in any way. The new "Exclusion Bill" granted the Home Office the authority to ban any non-UK citizen for "unacceptable speech" in a lecture, printed essay, or website. Blair began arguing that terrorism is a problem not only of those committing terrorist acts, but also those defending them. In the fascist mentality of the UK state, there is no difference between blowing up citizens in buses and trains and defending the actions of the ALF.

But my passage into England in September 2005 went unchallenged, such that I could once again be a featured speaker again at the International Animal Rights Gathering. Knowing full well that I was under surveillance, however, I carefully chose my words for an audience of 300 people packed into an outdoor tent. Trying to bottle up my passion was challenging, but the topic itself - the philosophical and political motivations of the ALF - doomed me.

The day after my talk, the amicable proprietor of my Bed and Breakfast served me the morning news with an ironic smile, asking: "Guess who is in the paper today?" I saw a prominently featured article with the spurious headline, "US Activist says: `We will Break your laws and destroy your property until we win." The story was about my allegedly inflammatory lecture, and gave the impression that I had crossed the Atlantic just to thumb my nose at Home Office. Although those are fine words in the headline, they were not mine. A hack reporter from The Daily Telegraph attributed a statement I made about the tactics of the ALF to me, as if delivered a personal ringing endorsement of maximum mayhem.

I knew my fate was sealed. I spoke to 1000 people and a menacing phalanx of cops at an anti-vivisection demonstration at Oxford University and enjoyed the last lazy days I would ever pass at Trafalgar Square and Hyde Park.

Shortly after returning home, I heard from the Home Office. Once again, they threatened to ban me and invited my comment for consideration. I denied saying the infamous quote attributed to me, but I admitted to other statements I thought innocuous.

Meanwhile, the marathon campaign against the Newchurch Farm and its guinea pig breeding operation for vivisection laboratories ended in dramatic victory. The leaders of SNGP graciously invited me to return to England in September to speak at a celebration event. But, quite predictably, the Home Office lowered the boom before I could pose any further "danger" to their disorderly "social order." My status was about to change from person of suspicion to persona non grata, from domestic terrorist to international terrorist.

We Politely Insist You Fuck Off

Thus, on August 24, 2005 I received the following letter from Home Office Secretary Charles Clarke:

Dear Dr Best:

After careful consideration, the Secretary of State has reached a final decision and has given a personal direction for you to be excluded from the United Kingdom on the grounds that your presence in the UK is non-conducive to the public good. The Secretary of State has taken this decision based on the actions you have taken and the statements you have made on animal rights.

The Secretary of State notes your admission that at the International Animal Rights Conference in East Peckham you stated that, "we don't want to reform them [vivisectors], we want to wipe them off the face of the earth." It is considered that these are your views and we have reason to believe that you have publicly stated these views in the UK and that you intend to continue to do so.

The Secretary of State also notes that in January 2005 you said in an interview posted on the Milwaukee Indymedia website that you "do not include attacks on inanimate objects as violence (vandalism, sabotage and other terms work better here)." He also notes that in May 2005 you wrote an article which was posted on the Arkangel website which stated, "if violence is needed to save an animal from attack, then violence is legitimate as a means of self-defence for animals."

The Secretary of State observes that in April 2004 you wrote an article on the Satya website entitled, "Thinking Pluralistically: A Case for Direct Action", in which you stated that, "it is obvious that not all violence is justified, but it is equally obvious that not all violence is unjustified. Self-defense is one example where it is acceptable and prudent to use force against another person if necessary. . . Acting as proxy agents or for animals who cannot defend themselves, ALF actions in principle are just."

In an article on your website from July 2004, you stated that, "whereas direct activists use an inclusive logic to appreciate all facets of our struggle, many mainstream activists use an exclusive logic that disparages militancy and illegal tactics. . . . If we look at the history of militant tactics in the human and animal liberation movements, we see that illegal actions have been very important and effective. I support SHAC. I support the ALF."

In expressing such views it is considered that you are fomenting and justifying terrorist violence and seeking to provoke others to terrorist acts and fomenting other serious criminal activity and seeking to provoke others to serious criminal acts.

In reaching his decision, the Secretary of State has taken account of your representations, in particular those in your letter of 8 August 2005. He notes your assertion that you do not advocate or incite violence. He is aware that you accept that you made the first statement detailed above but that you assert that this remark was "maliciously taken out of context".

The Secretary of State takes the view that even if your remarks at the Conference were taken out of context, when taken together with your other public statements and comments in various articles, your speech at the Conference demonstrates that you support and justify violent action, including the actions of the ALF. In your article of July 2004 you publicly admitted that you support the ALF. By expressing these views you are fomenting and justifying acts of terrorist violence in the UK, you are seeking to provoke others to terrorist acts in the UK and you are fomenting and justifying serious criminal activity and seeking to provoke others to serious criminal acts in the UK.

The Secretary of State considers that should you be allowed to enter the UK and attend further UK demonstrations or conferences you would continue to express such views. In doing so, you would be committing listed behaviours and would therefore be behaving in a way that is non-conducive to the public good.

In light of these factors, the Secretary of State is satisfied that you should be excluded from the UK on the grounds that your exclusion is conducive to the public good.

We instruct you not to travel to the UK as you will be refused admission on arrival. There is no statutory right of appeal against the Secretary of State's decision.

Yours Sincerely,

The Secretary of State

The Terrorism of "Terrorism"

"`Terrorism' is a word people use to refer to armed struggles they don't like." -John Burdick, Syracuse University

I give them some credit for doing a bit of homework. But it is astonishing that because of views I peacefully express as a philosopher and activist, a person without a criminal record, that with the stroke of a pen I was banned for life from four countries - England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland - and had "no statutory right of appeal." (Indeed, the humanist lawyers at the ACLU and their British counterparts ensured this would stand as - speciesist humanists that they were - they took no interest in my case and cause)

To my knowledge, I was the first person after the 7/7 bombings against whom the Home Office applied the new "rules of unacceptable speech." The day I received my "letter of exclusion," August 24, 2005, is the same day that the Home Office published their new list of "unacceptable behaviours." This means that their fascist rules were first exercised not against a Muslim cleric advocating jihadist revolt, but rather against a secular Western philosophy professor militating for a peaceful society that respects the rights of human and nonhuman animals alike.

By its own newly minted legal definitions, the UK had the right to ban me, but it is the right of a closed society, capitalist killing machine, and police state psychologically and economically threatened by animal rights.

When people use the same discourse of terrorism to describe those who fly fully-loaded passenger planes into high-rise buildings as well as those who rescue our fellow animals from the most obscene, unspeakable, prodigious violence and killing on the planet, the term clearly has been drained of all meaning. When corporations and states deploy the language of terrorism, it is purely for propaganda purposes, to cover up their own terrorist acts, and to denounce in the strongest language possible anything that threatens their interests.

I define terrorism as any intentional act of violence toward an innocent sentient being in order to advance an ideological, political, and economic agenda. It is a strange kind of terrorist who has never injured a single person, who is compassionate toward the suffering of others, and who risks his or her own freedom to save another from harm, violence, and death. It is not the ALF who are violent terrorists, but rather the British government, vivisectionists, and all facets of the animal exploitation industry. They are terrorists on the grounds that they intentionally harm and kill innocent living beings for ideological, political, and economic gains.

Industry leaders, scientists, state officials, and media figures alike never talk about the terrorism inflicted on animals in hunts, vivisection labs, fur farms, and slaughterhouses because their myopic speciesist definitions prohibit this. If animals - innocent "non-combatants" - can suffer and experience terror like humans, then those who torment them ought to be called terrorists. Nor do those who decry the animal rights movement as "violent" ever apply the term to denounce what thugs and police do to activists, many of whom have been killed while defending animals or the forests from being massacred and plundered for profit. While reporters unconsciously drop the loaded phrase "animal rights extremists," you will never hear or read the phrase "vivisection extremists" in relation to the horrific suffering "researchers" often inflict on animals.

I absolve myself of the charges of the Home Office because I reject the premises of their arguments and the loaded definitions of their terms. I reject the speciesist assumptions whereby they see animals as mere things or property, as resources that exist for any humanly devised purpose, however cruel and unnecessary.

I do not consider breaking into laboratories to free captive animals, or even destroying property used to exploit animals, to be violence or terrorism. These actions are undertaken by freedom fighters opposing the real terrorists who murder billions of innocent animals; as such, they are counter-terrorist actions.

With their long history of war, imperialism, and violence, the UK and US are the leading terrorist states on the planet. England rolls out the red carpet for genocidal maniacs like former Chilean dictator August Pinochet (responsible for the death of tens of thousands of his own people) and Ariel Sharon (a "man of peace" who has killed thousands of Palestinians), but ban advocates of peace and justice for all animals, a prerequisite for a viable social order. The values and sympathies of this fascist police state are as clear as its repulsive hypocrisies.

Convulsions of a Failed State

"These are perilous times ...Bloody scenes, I fear, are in reserve for our vision." William Lloyd Garrison, 19th century abolitionist

The Home Office ban of US animal rights activists is ineffective, illegitimate, and the desperate measure of a fascist state incompatible with an open society and the principles of democracy. But then again, after 9/11 and 7/7 Blair said civil rights are basically a thing of the past and the UK under Gordon Brown has followed this philosophy.

Ironically, while the intent of the Home Office was to silence radical views, they gave them even wider publicity than they would have received otherwise. In the aftermath of the ban I was deluged with request for interviews from international media. London Channel 4 aired a sympathetic 7 minute documentary about my case and gave me an uninterrupted platform to describe the plight of the animals, the need for militant direct action, and the complicity of the UK state in an evil of the highest order (see the link below).

I recognize that free speech is not an absolute right and has moral and legal limits; in the US, for instance, one does not have the legal right to incite violence in such a way as to cause possible harm to others.[2] But free speech should include the right to endorse civil disobedience and sabotage if one should want, with the goal being to bring about a higher moral good liberated once exploitation stops and respect of rights begins. Under the protections of free speech, one ought also to be able to defend and even to advocate violence. Free speech should include the right to articulate the limits of persuasion itself, to critique the system and institutions that are protected by the monopolization of violence, and to espouse the means and tactics necessary to overthrow a repressive social order.

My words may be unpopular - to animal exploiters and speciesist society as a whole - but free speech rights are designed precisely to protect controversial and critical discourse, not mainstream or conformist platitudes. An open society respects and protects these rights; a closed society rejects and denies them. With parallel regimes such as North Korea, China, and the US, the UK has become a fascist, totalitarian society, a police state that attacks dissent as a body's white blood cells goes after threats and invaders.

The Home Office has the right and the duty to prevent terrorism in the UK and to protect its citizens from attack. But I am a philosopher, not a terrorist; I carry words not weapons; I target the guilty not the innocent; I seek change for the betterment of all, not the dictatorship of a few; I draw from critical reason, not religious fundamentalism or fanaticism.

People like me are not a threat to the "public order" in the UK, the oppressors and exploiters are. We are not the cause of violence but rather the effect and response to it.

Sea Shepherd activists hurling bottles at Japanese whaling ship. Photograph: Ho/Reuters

When there are compassionate people in a society, a disturbance in the animal world will inevitably bring a disturbance in the human world.

Thus, if the Home Office wants peace, it must grant justice to animals. And until it does, the state and animal exploiters in particular can expect a shattering of the peace - of their peace - and ever greater firestorms of fury.

The End of Free Speech

"Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph." Thomas Paine

Free speech is a lie and myth on the same order as "democracy" itself - a vicious fiction peddled to gullible publics in the land of corporate plutocracies such as the UK and the US. The right to free speech exists only until you begin to use it and speak out against the prevailing powers, and once you do, especially if you are effective, you smash you, or kill you. Even more shocking than my own ban, in 2008 the Home Office wrote former ALF prisoner and now vegan educator, Gary Yourofsky, a Letter of Exclusion based on some of his pro-ALF writings. As Yourofsky has never been to the UK and never intended to go, this was similar to the movie Minority Report, where the cops bust for even thinking of doing something wrong, before you can do it. But it's even worse, for Yourofsky never even thought once about going to the UK in his life! And apparently the Home Office has have done away with nicety of offering a response before they ban you.

Clearly, with so much money at stake in the multi-billion dollar vivisection industry, the animal rights movement in England has become not only an ideological and political threat, but, far more seriously, an economic threat.

Just as human slavery was once a huge part of modern capitalist economies, so animal slavery is fundamental to capital accumulation today. The state can no longer ignore a movement that has discovered its power lies not in the vote but rather in the ability to shut down production. The direct action movement has transcended the largely meaningless gestures of protest - such as letter writing, demonstrations, and lobbying - pre-approved by the state, as it unavoidably awakens the system's wrath and vengeance.

And thus, as I write, brave animal liberation warriors rot in the prisons of the UK and US, and I speak of friends and comrades such as Kevin Jonas, Josh Harper, Lauren Gazzola, Gregg Avery, Natasha Avery, and Heather Nicholson. But the movement they helped to build, and today continue to inspire, is growing globally.

The animal rights movement has rocked the core of the British establishment and the Home Office has taken extraordinary measures against it, but this righteous force cannot be stopped or defeated. The menacing cops and laws of the UK dictatorship are not enough to stop the children, youth, families, mothers, and grandmothers from marching in the streets and knocking down walls to free animal prisoners. England is a barometer of the kinds of political storms one can expect in the US and elsewhere around the world as the struggle over animal rights moves to entirely new levels.

Every justice struggle up to the present has been relatively easy. Now it gets hard. We are involved in a serious battle - a war - that will be lengthy, protracted, costly, and most likely violent as it heats up (exactly like earlier struggles to end human slavery). Animal liberation is the most difficult liberation struggle of all because speciesism is primordial and universal.

Speciesism is arguably the first of any form of domination or hierarchy and it has spread like a deadly virus throughout the entire planet and all of human history. The problem is not limited to Western culture or to the modern world, such that there is some significant utopian past or radical alternative to recover. The problem is the human species itself, which but for rare exceptions is violent, destructive, and imperialistic. Universally, humans have vested interests in exploiting animals and think they have a God-given right to do so. To change these attitudes is to change the very nerve center of human consciousness, and thereby to change the totality of society itself. That is our task - no more and no less.

Dr. Steve Best is TPC's associate editor. Associate professor of philosophy at UTEP, award-winning writer, noted speaker, public intellectual, and seasoned activist, Steven Best engages the issues of the day such as animal rights, ecological crisis, biotechnology, liberation politics, terrorism, mass media, globalization, and capitalist domination. Best has published 10 books, over 100 articles and reviews, spoken in over a dozen countries, interviewed with media throughout the world, appeared in numerous documentaries, and was voted by VegNews as one of the nations "25 Most Fascinating Vegetarians." He has come under fire for his uncompromising advocacy of "total liberation" (humans, animals, and the earth) and has been banned from the UK for the power of his thoughts. From the US to Norway, from Sweden to France, from Germany to South Africa, Best shows what philosophy means in a world in crisis.

willpowerful@hotmail.com
For the latest updates on the animal liberation movement, visit NAALPO at http://www.animalliberationpre...

If you have a Facebook account, don't forget to look up Thomas Paine's Corner's Facebook page via the "search" feature and become a fan.

And if you have a MySpace account, don't forget to friend Thomas Paine's Corner at www.myspace.com/anarchovegan.

Resources:

The August 2005 "Exclusion Bill": http://media.apn.co.nz/webcont...

"Britain uses hate law to ban animal rights campaigner"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/educ...

"Speaking for the Animals, or the Terrorists?"
http://chronicle.com/free/v51/...

"More 4 News Opinion: Activist or Terrorist?"
http://www.channel4.com/more4/...

[1] On the history, ethics, and politics of the ALF, see Steven Best and Anthony J. Nocella, Terrorists or Freedom Fighters? Reflections on the Liberation of Animals. New York, Lantern Books, 2004.

[2] See Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969). at http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/... "Freedoms of speech and press do not permit a State to forbid advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action."

And here I disagree with this fine sentiment by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which notes on its website: "The best way to counter obnoxious speech is with more speech. Persuasion, not coercion, is the solution." The flaw with this idealized rational communication model is that the best arguments, often the radical critiques of existing societies, are stifled, marginalized, and repressed, as the prevailing points of view are overtly and covertly enforced, and it takes more than a good argument to challenge and overcome oppressive systems of power, it also takes varying degrees of force.

The Democracy Index: An Interview With Law Professor Heather Gerken

Rob Ellman — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 21:46:55 GMT

The topic below was originally posted on my blog, the Intrepid Liberal Journal.

On January 1, 2007, Yale Law School professor Heather Gerken published a widely read article in the LegalTimes entitled, "How Does Your State Rank on The Democracy Index." Gerken argued that just as the Environmental Performance Index ("EPI") shamed countries such as Belgium to upgrade their environmental practices, a "Democracy Index" would embarrass state and localities into reforming their electoral administration through competition.

Since Bush vs. Gore in 2000, the debate about electoral reform has been dominated by anecdotes and overheated abstractions. Liberals like me have long suspected that states such as Ohio and Florida were deliberately disenfranchising minority voters sympathetic to Democratic candidates. Conservatives complained that voter fraud and urban political machines were allowing ineligible voters to cast ballots at the expense of Republican candidates. With her article, Gerken contended that a Democracy Index would replace a debate dominated by shouting with data driven arguments instead:

"This index should take what Ohio State University law professor Daniel Tokaji calls a `moneyball approach.' The word `moneyball,' of course, refers to Michael Lewis' book of the same name about the success of the Oakland A's after management substituted hard numbers and empirical research for the gut-level judgments of baseball scouts in making hiring decisions.

Similarly, the Democracy Index could change the terms of the debate by giving voters something new: moneyball politics. It would offer cold, hard numbers and comparative data in place of atmospherics and anecdotes. It would provide bottom-line results in place of subjective judgments. It would let reformers talk like corporate executives, not starry-eyed idealists. And, most important, it would enable the voters to hold election officials accountable for their missteps.

In the end, a ranking system would work for a simple reason: No one wants to be at the bottom of the list."

Gerken further described her Democracy Index proposal and identified the major obstacles to good election practices with her new book, The Democracy Index: Why Our Election System Is Failing and How To Fix It (Princeton University Press). Her book is an accessible 181 pages and postulates that we need more facts about our election practices and that a ranking metric is our best hope to facilitate accountability and reform. Gerken also contends that our broken electoral system has less to do with intended malice than "deferred maintenance," a term typically applied to failed infrastructure such as broken bridges.

Shortly after Gerken's LegalTimes article was published, Both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, put her concept into proposed legislation and within a year, Congress set aside $10 million to fund model data collection programs in five states and the Pew Center. Other foundations also sponsored conferences and initial research. On March 1, 2007, Obama referred to these initiatives on the Senate floor as,

"an important first step toward improving the health of our democracy. We are all familiar with the problems that have recently plagued our elections: Long lines, lost ballots, voters improperly turned away from the polls. These are basic failures of process. Until we fix them, we run the risk in every election that we will once again experience the kind of chaos and uncertainty that paralyzed the nation in 2000. We can do better. We must do better. But to do better, we need more than anecdotal information. We need better, nonpartisan, objective information."

Hence, Gerken's efforts illustrated at least the potential for action from the body politic to facilitate electoral reform but obviously, more needs to be done.

With respect to electoral law, Gerken is among the most authoritative voices in the country. In 2006, Gerken joined the Yale Law School faculty where she teaches election and constitutional law. Previously, Gerken clerked for Supreme Court Justice David Souter and was an assistant professor at Harvard Law School, where she was granted tenure and won the Sachs-Freund teaching award. She has also written for the New Republic, Roll Call, and Legal Affairs and has been a frequent media commentator.

Gerken was among several commentators who appeared on Charlie Rose's program the very evening the Supreme Court rendered its fateful decision in Bush vs. Gore. During the 2008 presidential election, Gerken served on Barack Obama's election protection team.

Gerken agreed to a podcast interview with me over the telephone about her book and proposal for a Democracy index. Our conversation was just over seventeen minutes and can be accessed via the flash media player below.

The flash media player may not be accessible to some Worldwide Sawdust Internet Explorer users. Those people can click here to download this podcast or access a flash media player on my blog.

This interview can also be accessed at no cost via the Itunes Store by searching for either "Intrepid Liberal Journal" or "Robert Ellman."

Prayer for the Dying: The Thing Worse than Rebellion

Jason Miller — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 05:16:37 GMT

By Jason Miller

"The thing worse than rebellion is the thing that causes rebellion."

-Frederick Douglass

In an eerily ironic twist of fate, less than a month after I wrote a satirical interview with a despicable, fictitious proponent of our anthropocentric and ecocidal American Way of Life[1], an avaricious and bellicose way of life that is definitely a "thing that causes rebellion," I found myself engaged in an email exchange with a rabid and very real mouth-piece for our capitalist culture of death and domination. But before I get into the emails themselves though, let me establish the basis for our fascinating "dialogue."
To maintain its hegemony, the ruling class of the dominant culture has to rally the masses against an existential threat in order to justify the existence of a police state apparatus in our so-called "liberal democracy," or as my "email friend" semi-accurately pointed out, constitutional republic (more on that later). Fortunately for them, the crypto-fascist corporate-state complex has tens of thousands of propaganda-dispensing foot-soldiers, ranging from inculcated "patriotic" citizen journalists to well-compensated sycophantic pundits in the corporate media.

Unswerving devotion to God, capitalism, and country was epidemic in the US until the Soviet Union collapsed and caused the haunting specter of evil "Communists lurking around every corner" to vanish more quickly than a child's fears of the bogeyman once mom has looked under the bed and given the "all clear." But cunning as they are, the US ruling elite contrived a replacement ideological adversary. Potentially ubiquitous and infinitely malevolent, Terrorism, the new enemy against which the dutiful are manning the bulwarks, has stoked the dying embers of patriarchal Calvinism; "free" markets and rampant consumerism; and pathological nationalism. Terrorism is a beautiful thing for those with a vested interested in sustaining the prevailing paradigm. Anyone, anywhere, anytime could be a terrorist, so long as they communicate thoughts or act in ways that pose a real challenge to the status quo.

'Terrorism' is a word people use to refer to armed struggles they don't like.

--John Burdick, Syracuse University

Burdick makes an excellent point, but the blatant abuse of the word 'terrorism' has gone far beyond demonizing those engaged in armed struggles that clash with our greed-driven, imperialist, nature-dominating system. Aside from brown-skinned denizens of the Middle East and Central and South America with the audacity to oppose the Washington Consensus militarily with their "terrorism," our corporatist government has determined that we are plagued by a host of "domestic terrorists." The primary threats, according to the FBI, are the "sinister" nonhuman animal and Earth defenders whom the feds have labeled as "eco-terrorists."

While many people recognize that we are in the midst of a global ecocrisis, including climate change, food shortages, rampant deforestation, the Sixth Extinction, human overpopulation, the rapidly decreasing availability of potable water, imperialist resource wars, and more, the rotten-to-the-core status quo still has a core constituency of die-hards who are so blind, hard-hearted, indoctrinated, or highly paid that they vigorously support a system that is destroying the very planet which sustains us.

And few exemplify the abhorrent ecocide-enabling champions of capitalist "democracy"[2] better than the craven and ill-educated person (or people) who are behind an Internet entity which calls itself "Target of Opportunity," which can be found at http://www.targetofopportunity...

Whilst exploring their site, I was surprised to note the extremely provocative and stunningly benighted nature of their content. Target of Opportunity's (ToO's) "Hit List," which comes up when one clicks on the link labeled "enemy targets," consists of an odd montage of people and groups which ToO has determined are "radical Marxist liberals," including Cindy Sheehan, the ALF, the Berkeley City Council, Code Pink, National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee, Paul Watson, Progressive Democrats of America, and three of my associates in the animal liberation movement, Jerry Vlasak, Camille Hankins and Steve Best.

Curiosity piqued, I decided to contact ToO at the email address the site provides,

top@targetofopportunity.com
. Here is the intriguing back and forth I had with the twisted and pusillanimous soul(s) who would only identify as "The Men and Women of TargetOfOpportunity.com Located Throughout the United States of America":

3/30/09:

Jason S. Miller wrote:

Hello,

Steve Best brought your site to my attention and I wanted to introduce myself.

It is good to hear that Steven Best has seen this website. We are not surprised to see that he has not taken the time to dispute a single fact presented on this website. It seems we got the information right.

I'm an anarcho-vegan straight edge who is a close friend and ally of Steve Best. I have co-written several essays with him and my provocative, radical, and controversial polemics are scattered all about the Internet on many different sites-most of which would be described as "liberal" in your vernacular or "jargon."

Here's some reading material for you. This is the tip if the iceberg. I plucked most of these links from ALF.com and NAALPO, but there's plenty more if you Google for them:

http://www.animalliberationfro...

http://www.raisethefist.com/ne...

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories...

http://www.animalliberationpre...

http://news.infoshop.org/artic...

http://thomaspainescorner.word...

I publish a well-known (you folks would probably call it "notorious" or perhaps even "terrorist") blog called Thomas Paine's Corner. TPC has a strong and consistent base of animal liberationist and anarchist readers, writers and supporters. Steve Best is a member of our editorial collective.

You can see for yourself(ves) here:

http://thomaspainescorner.word...

I have strong and deep ties to the abolitionist/animal liberation movement, maintain a large grass-roots communications network of like-minded people, and support militant direct action groups such as the ALF, SHAC, Sea Shepherd, the ELF, the Justice Department, and the Animal Brigade. I recently started simulposting (with NAALPO and Jerry Vlasak) the anonymous communiqu?s from some of these groups. All of my activities are legal, of course.

Militant Direct Action... How do you not see that as acts of terrorism? Are you familiar with Linda's Fashions of Geistown, PA. Your comrade Jerry Vlasak was kind enough to blame the store for the attack.

You probably feel that attacking law abiding citizens and destroying their property is acceptable. You probably would not feel that way if it was done to your property. You probably even feel that you should be allowed to implement any direct action without any recrimination. Anything you do should be considered above the law and accepted as proper action against anyone you feel is deserving of your attention and attacks. How is that any different than the Brown Shirts of the 1930's taking direct action against the Jews? That is easy to answer... it is not any different. You can sugar coat it however you like, but there it is.

I see that you have targeted Best, Paul Watson, NAALPO, and another ally of mine, Camille Hankins.

Tsk, tsk. You should leave people of good conscience alone!

Best regards,

Jason Miller
Founder and Senior Editor of Thomas Paine's Corner

How exactly did we target these people? Did we threaten them? No. Did we attack them? No. Did we destroy any of their property? No. Did we support anyone that did carry out a direct action against any of them? No.

We are sorry you believe that we have targeted Steven Best, paul Watson, the NAALPO, and Camille Hankins. We have not. All we have done is to record and maintain for the historical record the actions of these people. We just give credit where credit is due. Sorry you do not like the truth. We notice you have not disputed a single fact.

So you consider supporting the destructive actions against Linda's Fashions to be of people of good conscience. That is pretty much what we suspected.

-
Sincerely,

The Men and Women of
TargetOfOpportunity.com
Located Throughout the
United States of America

-- Original Message --
From: TOP
To: Jason S. Miller
Sent: Tuesday, March 31, 2009 11:09 AM
Subject: Re: Introduction by way of Steve Best

Jason S. Miller wrote:

Hi,

Thanks for your prompt reply.

I read through your responses and a few things came to mind:

1. There's at least one aspect of your site which I'm certain Steve would dispute. Your caption of the Best, Coronado, and Yourofsky photo has Coronado and Yourofsky labeled backwards.

A typo that has been corrected. Thanks for the correction.

2. Why do you value property over sentient beings?

Why do you value your beliefs over the law and other peoples lives whereby it is acceptable to destroy what is not yours to destroy?

Why do you believe that you have the authority to enforce your beliefs on others by destroying their property?

Why do you see attacks on others as being acceptable methods of enforcing your ideals?

How does your strategy of direct action differ from the tactics of the Brown Shirts attacking and destroying the property of the Jews in Germany during the 1930s?

Why did you not address the question we presented about Linda's Fashions?

3. Who are the Men and Women of Target of Opportunity.com? This cloak and dagger approach you have has piqued my curiosity. I understand your reticence to identify yourselves, but try to see it from my side. Curiosity aside, corresponding with a nameless, faceless person is rather creepy and Kafkaesque.

Best regards,

Jason

We are perplexed on why it has piqued your curiosity. We would think that you would understand this tactic of having an identity that is somewhat of an enigma.

-
Sincerely,

The Men and Women of
TargetOfOpportunity.com
Located Throughout the
United States of America

From: Jason S. Miller
Sent: Wednesday, April 01, 2009 5:10 PM
To: TOP
Subject: Re: Introduction by way of Steve Best

Hello again,

I've been pretty busy today, so rather than crafting a lengthy response and delaying the continuation of this stimulating dialogue, I'm sending you a link to one of Best's pieces that I just republished on Thomas Paine's Corner. It's a nice encapsulation of a worldview (with respect to the question of valuing life over property) that closely parallels my own. I had already formed my own philosophies before I met Steve and we don't agree on every little nuance, but we are eerily similar in our viewpoints. After reading this essay, you'll have the answers to your questions you asked of me.

http://thomaspainescorner.word...

With respect to maintaining anonymity, I fully appreciate and understand why these nonhuman animal defenders (see the link below) remain underground and conceal their identities from our murderous capitalist "democracy"

http://thomaspainescorner.word...

However, if one is working aboveground and within the bounds of the law, like I am and like you have stated that you are, I see no reason to remain anonymous.

I'm not hiding. Why are you? I find that to be quite perplexing.

And why is it that you value property over life?

"So Midas, king of Lydia, swelled at first with pride when he found he could transform everything he touched to gold; but when he beheld his food grow rigid and his drink harden into golden ice then he understood that this gift was a bane and in his loathing for gold, cursed his prayer"

Best regards,

Jason

4/1/09:

Jason S. Miller wrote:

Hello again,

snip snip snip

Let's just get to the meat of this e-mail.

However, if one is working aboveground and within the bounds of the law, like I am and like you have stated that you are, I see no reason to remain anonymous.

I'm not hiding. Why are you? I find that to be quite perplexing.

With the violent attitude of those that work underground as you have mentioned and we have written about and the fact that several of us have received death threats over the years, we felt that it best if we kept a low profile. We believe that this keeps everyone much safer because we do have the ability to defend ourselves with extraordinary measures. This aside, the fact that you place so much importance on the issue of who we are, tells us that you would love to stop us from saying what we have to say and keeping a record of what others do.

And why is it that you value property over life?

It is not that we value property over life, it is just that we value someone else's property as someone else's property and it is not ours to destroy.

Why is it that no one ever targets exterminators considering their motive is nothing more than killing rats and other such creatures with backbones, social structure, and whatever other attributes are commonly used to defend your position that it is acceptable to destroy other peoples property?

-
Sincerely,

The Men and Women of
TargetOfOpportunity.com
Located Throughout the
United States of America

4/3/09

Jason S. Miller wrote:

Good evening,

Thanks for writing back. You made some interesting points.

Hmmmm! Now you've got me thinking......

There are plenty of violent people who are of your sociopolitical persuasion as well. And I HAVE received death threats over the years (like you). Perhaps I will need to employ extraordinary measures to protect myself because I reveal my identity, photo, and general location. I have a couple of riot guns, a .38, and one of my three companion dogs is a pit bull. (I almost sound like a red-neck, don't I? And you didn't think us "liberals" believed in the 2nd Amendment) Think any of your allies will come calling? Once they cross the thresh-hold of my home, they're fair game, you know. I hate the thought of all that blood splattered about my house....

We all know Liberals oppose the 2nd Amendment. They just usually like to exclude themselves from the laws they write. But it obvious that you see the error of gun control laws. They do not do anything but prevent law abiding citizens from being able to protect themselves until the police can get there and that does not take into account the deterrence that comes the knowledge that a gun might live in that house.

If you do not value property over life, then why do you value property enough to refrain from destroying someone else's property, yet (and please correct me if you are vegans) you do not value life enough to refrain from destroying lives that belong to other sentient beings?

Because in a civilized society, it is wrong to destroy someone else's property. Why this has to be explained to what appears to be a well-educated person is beyond us. Here is a quote you might like.

"In the natural world, every living thing, be it plant or animal, exploits every other living thing that exists on the planet in order to survive just one more day regardless of the degree of separation. Like it or not, that is nature."

How does what you say fit into nature? There are creatures all over the world, lions, tigers, and bears, etc... that take the lives of other creatures. Why is man any different?

With respect to exterminators, personally, I've never liked them. Particularly after I discovered that extermination was Tom DeLay's former profession. Yes, thanks to DeLay, the smidgeon of goodwill exterminators had left with me went right out the proverbial window.

Best regards,

Jason

If you believe that it is acceptable to destroy property belonging to people that are "destroying lives that belong to other sentient beings," why do you not encourage destroying the property of exterminating companies like Orkin or Teminix? Why not burn down slaughterhouses rather than attack and destroy and terrorize researchers that you know cannot defend themselves? Wait, we might have just answered our own question.

-
Sincerely,

The Men and Women of
TargetOfOpportunity.com
Located Throughout the
United States of America

4/4/09

Jason S. Miller wrote:

Hello,

Great to hear back from you!

While it's true that living necessarily entails causing the deaths of other sentient beings (one can even take that to the level of absurdity and think in terms of the insects that we unwittingly step upon as we walk or the microbes that our immune system eradicates), and it's true that there are predatory nonhuman animals, nonhuman animals don't willfully and intentionally inflict widespread, unnecessary suffering upon other sentient beings the way we human animals do. We vegans realize that it is impossible to function in the world without killing other sentient beings (i.e. insects and microbes or in self defense or extensional self defense). However, we embrace an ethical commitment to come as close as we possibly can to eliminating nonhuman animal exploitation of any sort. Personally, I loved eating "meat," but I realized how cruel it was for a human animal, who does not HAVE to eat "meat" to live, to consume the flesh of another sentient being when there are so many alternative foods. Thus I became a vegan and animal liberationist. The four baselines here are sentience, intent, necessity, and unavoidability.

It is no more cruel or unnatural for a human to eat meat than it is for a lion to eat meat. Man has been eating meat for 200,000+ years. You being a Vegan is a choice you made for yourself. If you really believe that it is cruel to eat the flesh of another animal, then why do you not attack consumers that buy meat. The demand for meat is the reason that there is a supply. If it is wrong for a slaughterhouse to exist, then it is wrong for any of the consumption after the product leaves the slaughterhouse. Why not target consumers? Are they not a suitable target. You should destroy their homes and cars and other personal property, that is if you really believe your convictions. They would certainly be fair targets by your own reasoning.

Getting back to the issue of property. Since you're so committed to your principle that the property of others is sacrosanct, to be ethically consistent you would have to be vehemently opposed to the ongoing US war crime in Iraq, (and wars of aggression in general for that matter), as our illegal invasion has decimated and plundered billions of dollars worth of property belonging to Iraqi citizens. Where do you stand on the Nuremberg crimes of the 21st century?

You have never addressed the question of what if it was your property that was being targeted and destroyed? Would that be an acceptable tactic to someone that disagreed with the vegetables you decided to eat?

If you want to get into the question of the Iraq war, this is quite a shift from Steven Best and his support of direct action. In order for you to claim that this war is illegal, you first must ignore the terms of the Ceasefire from Gulf War I. It was not an illegal invasion. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but anyone that claims that this is an illegal war does not understand that if Saddam had lived up to the terms of the Ceasefire, he and his sons would still be alive and in power to kill as many of their citizens as they felt like killing.

I support virtually any form of militant direct action that destroys equipment, facilities, machinery, laboratories, stores, tools, or other infrastructure or implements used in the exploitation, torture, and/or murder of nonhuman animals.

Slaughterhouses, much to my delight, have actually been targeted by direct action:

March 25, 2003 - Petaluma, California
Anonymous
Rancho Veal Slaughterhouse set ablaze causing $10,000 in damages. Graffiti left behind read "stop the killing".

http://earthliberation.org/old...

As has the US Navy (a group which I would hope would be capable of defending itself, as opposed to the poor, defenseless vivisectors about whom you expressed your concern):

March 28, 2003 - Montgomery, Alabama
Earth Liberation Front
Vehicles at Navy Recruiting Headquarters in Montgomery attacked. Damages included messages spraypainted on three Navy sedans and two Navy vans, and one large two-panel truck was set on fire.

http://earthliberation.org/old...

If you support them so hardly, why do you not be true to your heart and engage in such activities yourself. If you believe they are wrong, you sit on the side lines and allow someone else to commit the crimes you know is ethically and morally wrong. If you refuse to participate in your heartfelt beliefs, why do you even bother to have them or support them?

(Just two of many examples I could provide).

Enjoy your weekend!

Best regards,

Jason

-
Sincerely,

The Men and Women of
TargetOfOpportunity.com
Located Throughout the
United States of America

4/5/09

Jason S. Miller wrote:

Top of the morning to you!

I'm going to do a little dissection of your responses and then I've got some additional points to make.

You wrote:

It is no more cruel or unnatural for a human to eat meat than it is for a lion to eat meat.

Sure, I'll concede that point, but only on the condition that we agree that all "meat" is fair game, including human flesh and everyone's cats and dogs. As they say, "meat's meat, so let's eat."

People do eat dogs and cats in certain parts of the world. As far as eating human flesh, it does not surprise us that you might suggest that. The lack of respect for other peoples property clearly shows the lack respect for many aspects of humans in general.

Man has been eating meat for 200,000+ years.

Ok, I'll grant you that one too, but only so long as we agree that if we're going to condone flesh consumption based on tradition, we also must agree that human slavery and abortion are socially acceptable, ethical practices because "Man" (you are indeed a patriarchal anthropocentric speciesist, aren't you?) has been enslaving and aborting for thousands of years.

We never said anything about tradition. The same could be said for eating vegetables. Man has dieted on veggies for that long too. And please, do not try to change the subject of bringing in the subjects of slavery and abortion.

You wrote:

If you really believe that it is cruel to eat the flesh of another animal, then why do you not attack consumers that buy meat. The demand for meat is the reason that there is a supply. If it is wrong for a slaughterhouse to exist, then it is wrong for any of the consumption after the product leaves the slaughterhouse. Why not target consumers? Are they not a suitable target. You should destroy their homes and cars and other personal property, that is if you really believe your convictions. They would certainly be fair targets by your own reasoning.

If you really believe that those you have labeled as "terrorists" on your site are such a threat to "America," why don't you attack them yourself instead of goading the violent members of your sociopolitical persuasion into doing it?

To answer your question, beyond answering it with another question (as you have done with almost every one of my queries of you), as an abolitionist with an understanding of history and complex social dynamics, I recognize how asinine it would be for vegans and animal liberationists to begin attacking every person who purchases or consumes meat. Successful social movements (i.e. the abolition of human slavery and women's suffrage) were long and arduous struggles involving multiple tactics on multiple fronts carried out by people of varying temperaments, capacities, ages, geographical locations, resources, races, educations, sexes, degrees of courage, etc. Every abolitionist and suffragist didn't practice violence, but some did. And they certainly weren't idiotic enough to run around attacking every individual who supported slavery or opposed a woman's right to vote. When they engaged in violence, they attacked the system and those in power.

If it is wrong for the meat packers and slaughterhouses to exist, then it is wrong for the consumers of the product they produce. That is like saying that it is wrong to sell humans into slavery, but it is acceptable to own slaves.

Like those who have waged the battles for liberation throughout history, those of us comprising the animal liberation movement, collectively speaking, employ many strategies, two of which are germane to our little dialogue here.

Our strategy at the individual level is to educate and inspire "meat" eaters to become vegan, as we were once educated and inspired to do so ourselves. Despite my misgivings about our species, I have not lost faith in the human animal's capacity to empathize with other sentient beings to the extent that eventually we'll abandon the malevolent "tradition" of exploiting, torturing, murdering, and eating them.

But you have no right to punish or attack people that have not broken any laws. You do not have the authority do to so. If you want the law to change, there are legal ways to go about it. Maybe you get a change in the law, maybe you do not, but you do not have the right to commit direct actions because you are emotionally charged. Again, what if someone did that to you, would that be acceptable?

However, the greedy and cynical individuals and corporate entities wielding the power to enslave, torture, and murder billions of nonhuman animals every year for profit are incorrigible and irredeemable. They spend hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying (or bribing would be a more apt term) our "representatives" in our capitalist "democracy" and mind-fucking the populace with Madison Avenue mendacities.

Are you saying that all Liberal lobbyist should be stopped? Or does it just depend on whether or not the lobbying effort coincides with your view? Everyone has a chance to be heard. That is what Lobbyist do. The represent groups of people that want something from their representatives. Your opposition to the capitalist system and democracy is about what we expected. Of course, we do not live in a democracy, we live in a Republic. We practice democracy when we vote. This is a common mistake that most people make thinking that our government is a democracy.

These actions perpetuate the insane and sociopathic practice of exploiting sentient beings (that means that they feel pain, just like you and I) so that people will continue to eat their flesh, wear their skin, drink the milk of their babies, and more because it is "normal and healthy." Therefore, as we (again speaking collectively) struggle for animal liberation, it is moral, just and necessary to impede and assail the murder machine by any means necessary.

It took the Civil War to end that "peculiar institution" of human slavery. Perhaps history will repeat itself.

You wrote:

Setting aside the debate as to whether or not the invasion was "legal" or not, there is no sane argument demonstrating that the hundreds of thousands (a conservative estimate relative to numbers cited by a number of sources) of dead Iraqis, four million displaced Iraqis and those Iraqis living in a decimated, depleted uranium laden environment under the rule of a US puppet government are better off now that Saddam is gone. Funny how Saddam the torturer was an ally when it was in "America's" interest. He was A-OK with the Red, White and Blue to the extent that we supplied him with the means to kill a million Iranians and tens of thousands of Kurds back in the days when Reagan sent "Rummy" to suck his cock, figuratively speaking of course. So we enabled Saddam to kill as many of his citizens as he felt like killing when he was our ally, once his strategic value evaporated we let our puppets try him in a kangaroo court and lynch him in a fashion that would have made the Klan beam with pride, and then we took over where he left off, using 150,000 of our troops to kill as many of his citizens as we felt like killing. (Actually, past tense is not accurate-it's present and future as well; our troops are still slaughtering away!)

He was the leader of a foreign country. We did not agree with his government, but it was a sovereign country and all we can do is to either befriend him or make him an enemy. He was more of a friend until he decided to invade Kuwait. But it is good to know that you think that American troops are targeting civilians at will. In your opinion, it would seem, we never really had any military targets, just civilians to kill randomly and as we saw fit. We think you are wrong, but I am sure the troops over there appreciate your support.

Besides, where was "America's" benevolent concern for victims of ruthless tyrants in the many instances in which we installed and supported them?

For example:

http://www.thirdworldtraveler....

Which brings me to another important point. Your strong tendency to fetishize laws puts you in direct opposition to justice in many instances, as history (and the present too for that matter) is rife with examples of legal mechanisms supporting and perpetuating abject injustice. Two such historical examples, if you are true to the image that your site projects, would be highly applicable to you. Christ railed against the Pharisees for their legalistic ways. Are you not a Christian? The Boston Tea Party, one of the catalyzing acts of the American Revolution, involved destruction of property. And the Revolutionary War itself involved a tad of violence too. Are you not a patriot?

Every person that commits a direct action compares themselves to the Boston Tea Party. Are you trying to say that the Boston Tea Party was the reason for the Revolutionary War? We here are all patriots. We believe in the ideals of the founding fathers and we do not dismiss their contribution for establishing this country. We do not refer to them as White slave owning males that did not want to pay their taxes as so many in your corner do. So please do not insult my intelligence when you would be the first to condemn the founding fathers.

You wrote:

(Wow! Sorry if this sounds demeaning, but responding to this nonsense is starting to make my head spin).

Nice try, but I'll not give you the satisfaction of either confessing to acts of compassion the murder machine has criminalized or acknowledging that I lack the courage of my convictions.

You never have answered the question, if it were you as the target of someone else destroying your property, would it be acceptable based on their view of the world and what you had done to damage the world in their eyes?

Also, I know that direct action against those who exploit nonhuman animals is ethically and morally RIGHT.

Is direct action against those that vandalize property, terrorise families, and/or place Molotov cocktails at the homes of elderly women acceptable and morally right?[4]

Their refusal to allow "minor details" like evidence, specifics, or complexity stand in their way; their consistent overgeneralizations; their obsession with false dichotomies; their absurd conflation of highly diverse philosophies, groups, and persons into one entity which they grossly mischaracterize as "liberal;" and their morally repugnant enshrinement of the "American Way of Death" aside, whomever is slithering about behind their shroud of anonymity at ToO has created a "hit list," included addresses and phone numbers for those on the list, and published this "call to action" which appears under the link "Our Mission:"

This is a call to action! These anti-American Liberals are dangerous people that can no longer be ignored! One person can make a big difference!

There are those that read about history.

There are those that make history.

Which one do you want to be?

It is time to get involved...

These people and organizations are Enemies of Freedom, the American people, and the American way of life!!! Each and every one should be considered a "Target of Opportunity"

Since many of the "terrorists" on ToO's "hit list" happen to be animal defenders, it's worth noting that the state terrorists in DC whom ToO so ardently supports have slaughtered millions upon millions of people to advance corporate interests and to attempt to maintain US world hegemony. Meanwhile, the activists fighting the abject exploitation of nonhuman animals have killed exactly zero humans and have followed in the footsteps of "terrorists" such as those who fought our own American Revolution, John Brown, Nelson Mandela, and the Jewish Resistance to Nazi Genocide by taking a militant approach and engaging in direct action against injustice.

In a soon-to-be-published essay detailing how and why he was banned from the UK by its increasingly Orwellian police state, here is Steve Best, who appears on ToO's "hit list," with a number of thoughts that are relevant to the ridiculous way in which ToO bandies the word "terrorist" about so freely and recklessly:

"I came out in favor of the ALF because after careful study of their history, arguments, and results, I concluded that their actions are effective, necessary, and just. Governments, animal exploitation industries, and most mass media characterize the ALF as violent terrorists, but I see them as freedom fighters and counter-terrorists. The ALF is a new justice movement defending innocent beings under attack and fighting the real terrorists who torture and kill animals without justification."

"Breaking and entering locked buildings, smashing fur store windows, torching delivery trucks - it all sounds nothing short of vandalism or even terrorism. But I believe ALF actions are defensible because (1) what happens to animals is wrong, and (2) legal channels to stop it are blocked by speciesism and corrupt governments that support the property rights of industries over the moral rights of animals.

I believe that no door, no law, no cop, no government, and no profit margin should stand in the way between an animal and its freedom. I wish that legal methods of animal liberation were adequate to free animals from their oppressors, but they are not. Governments are corrupt and speciesist and serve their corporate masters. Animals are too important a resource and commodity for corporations to voluntarily free them, and so animal liberation requires militant tactics such as raids to rescue animals and property destruction to weaken, cripple, or eliminate oppressors."

I do not believe that social change comes about through moral persuasion or legislative initiatives, but rather through one kind of force and pressure or another. No human liberation movement has every won its cause except by using threats, force, confrontational tactics, and violence, why should it be any different for the animal liberation movement?"

And:

"It is a strange kind of terrorist who has never injured a single person, who is compassionate toward the suffering of others, and who risks his or her own freedom to save another from harm, violence, and death. It is not the ALF who are violent terrorists, but rather the British state, vivisectionists, and all facets of the animal exploitation industry. They are terrorists on the grounds that they intentionally harm and kill innocent living beings for ideological, political, and economic goals."

And finally this profound explanation of the militant attitude and actions of many in the animal liberation movement:

"When there are compassionate people in a society, a disturbance in the animal world will inevitably bring a disturbance in the human world."

If the rhetoric spewed by the nameless, faceless, spineless entity behind ToO were not so incitive and representative of the worldview of ultra-nationalist, unapologetically speciesist, militaristic, ultra-capitalist, dyed in the wool uber-patriots who were hard-core supporters of McCain and Palin[3], one could readily file it under nonsense and dismiss it. But in a socioeconomic environment in which the line between the state and corporations has become increasingly blurred; the legal system has become almost exclusively devoted to protecting and serving the ruling elite, corporate entities, profit, and property; and the word "terrorist" is pinned upon nearly anyone uttering words or committing deeds contrary to God, capitalism, and country, the increasing numbers of us who recognize that the "American Way of Life" is wreaking havoc on the planet, need to take ToO's cartoonish portrayal of "America's enemies" and calls to "target" those on their "hit list" seriously.

Members of the SHAC 7, dedicated defenders of nonhuman animals who took on a malevolent exploitative corporation, weren't protected by Brandenburg vs. Ohio and now sit in prison-this despite the fact that they didn't tell specific individuals to commit specific and imminent acts of violence. To ensure that the First Amendment applies equally to all, regardless of our sociopolitical persuasion, we need to demand the release of the SHAC 7 and the reactivation of the Nuremberg Files anti-abortion site or an immediate deactivation of the Target of Opportunity website.

Meanwhile, a prayer for the dying is inevitable. Question is, will it be a prayer of thanks for the demise of dominionism and capitalism, the things that are worse than the rebellion they cause, or one of mourning for the Earth and its sentient inhabitants?

NOTES:

1][2 a sociopolitical system which is neither a democracy or a republic but a corporatist state ruled by the rapacious and cynical members of society that preeminent sociologist C. Wright Mills identified and analyzed so well in 1956 in his book, The Power Elite.

[3] This is no endorsement of Obama or the Democrats. I am an anarchovegan and loathe establishment politics in the US. McCain and Palin are simply overtly malevolent people, while Obama and Biden are "evil lite."

[4] To finally answer ToO's anonymous webmaster's burning question (which I intentionally ignored several times in our email "chat" because they only addressed a small fraction of what I wrote), of course I am morally opposed to militant direct action against families, elderly women, and anyone (including me) who is not directly involved in human or nonhuman animal oppression or exploitation.

Jason Miller is a relentless anti-capitalist, vegan straight edge, and animal liberationist. He is also the senior editor and founder of Thomas Paine's Corner.

willpowerful@hotmail.com
If you have a Facebook account, don't forget to look up Thomas Paine's Corner's Facebook page via the "search" feature and become a fan.

And if you have a MySpace account, don't forget to friend Thomas Paine's Corner at www.myspace.com/anarchovegan.